Why Capitalism Can't be Relied upon in a Crisis

Capitalism is centered around making as much money as possible. I don't know who came up with the "fulfill needs" or "provide for the market" bullshit - probably greedy capitalists looking to make poor people feel noble while wasting their lives making strangers rich, but I digress. That companies sell things that people actually need is a happy coincidence - if companies could somehow all make money exclusively from beanie babies and week-old sandwich crusts, they would. Profit is the only objective. Nothing more.

To that end, companies have spent decades doing their very best to cut costs and maximize profit; assigning the absolute minimum number of staff required to run a business, outsourcing important business functions to third parties overseas, and adopting a 'just in time' supply chain management model so that they don't pay any extra to store tomorrow's goods when all they need to make money today is today's goods. Tomorrow's goods will arrive tomorrow. The first point is troublesome but only in the short term - basically until the end of the day - as more staff can be assigned pretty much instantly. The other two, outsourcing and 'just in time' are much more problematic. Yes, the system works, but only in 'business as usual' mode - only if there is no adversity or strain on the system. Place a little pressure, and the whole thing falls in on itself like playing cards.

'Just in time' Supply Chain Management

We have entrusted supermarkets and other stores with everything - food, medicine, you name it. We don't keep weeks worth of these things because it's their job to keep items in stock, but they treat it like a joke, as if supply lines will never fail. 'Just in time' delivery means that as goods arrive as needed and no sooner, because storing excess goods is expensive. Drivers come every day, right? What's the big deal? I'll tell you what the big deal is; just because deliveries need to come every day does not mean they will. Drivers could get sick in a pandemic, trucks could get stuck in a snowstorm, ships could get veered off course or sink entirely. Any number of things could happen, and when the main plan for essential businesses is to hope everything goes smoothly, then it poses a big problem when the probability that something unexpected might happen and supply lines are compromised. Some might say that supermarket and pharmacist profits rely on their keeping shelves stocked, but that logic sounds suspiciously like wishful thinking. They can't guarantee that shipments will be predictable, which means a lot of people may go without food and/or medicine in a disaster and/or pandemic situation.

Remember that capitalism drives businesses to create profit, not to deliver what people need. If profit can be achieved by relying on a precarious and complex network of moving parts, with no fail-safe or contingency plan, then so be it. Yes, shelves are restocked regularly, but only when supplies keep moving. Even two days without a shipment puts hundreds or thousands of people at risk. This is not a flaw, this is by design; save money by storing only exactly what you need today and hope that more comes tomorrow. If it doesn't, then a disaster is occurring and people will be too busy with that to ask why the stores only had a single day's worth of supplies. Customers and operations personnel will suffer, but that's no skin off the backs of upper management - the people who elected to save money by using 'just in time'. They'll do just fine.

Outsourcing (globalism)

Exploiting poor people is capitalism's bread and butter. How else to amass a fortune of billions, if not on the backs of people you pay cents per day? Here in the west, employees are relatively well paid and work in relatively good conditions. What's the aspiring billionaire to do? Suck it up and pay people what they're worth in his own country, thereby supporting local employees and businesses? Hell no! He goes and finds people in impoverished countries and gets them to work making his towels or sneakers or lifesaving ventilators and face masks. Then he simply orders what he needs for when he needs it and, hey presto, it arrives 'just in time'.

This works as long as things are going well and supplies aren't running short because, hey, who's gonna run out of shitty face masks, amirite? Except, uh oh, we fucked up. It turns out that sometimes, like during a disaster, or say, a disease pandemic, we experience shortages of things that we wouldn't have run out of previously. These are the times when having supplies on hand - lifesaving supplies at that - are most important. These are the times when capitalism fails us the most. Not only is stock only stored in incredibly short-term amounts, but the factories where that stock originates is on the other side of the world, further complicating the supply chain, increasing delivery times, and making the ownership of that stock tenuous at best. If the buyer and the producer reside on opposite sides of the planet, and both are in desperate need of a particular good at the same time, which do you think will get it first, and get more of it, if at all? Sure, the buyer technically owns the goods, and theoretically they should be the ones to receive it before anyone else, but in reality, the producer has all the power because they’re the ones in possession of the goods.

For example; an American company may be contracted to sell face masks to American hospitals, but that business buys their masks from a Chinese manufacturing firm. If Chinese hospitals have need for those face masks as well, then the manufacturer may well opt to sell the masks to Chinese hospitals instead, leaving the American firm and American hospitals waiting for new masks to be manufactured. The American firm can whine and belt all they want about purchasing agreements and deadlines but the reality is that the manufacturer is the one with possession of the masks, therefore the power belongs to them. If you don't have something in your possession, and it's possible to have it in your possession, then you don't own it. Don't believe me? Go to a city with limited supplies of fresh water, leave a pallet of clean bottled water out on the street, and count the seconds people respect your "property rights". 

The only thing that can be depended on in supply chain management is having physical possession of your goods. Anything else is theoretical at best. It works fine when everything is going well, no-one is disputing that. The problem is that sometimes, things don’t always go perfectly, yet companies act like it always will, putting us all at risk.

Conclusion

Capitalism, as an economic system, cannot be relied upon. Its participants' main concerns revolve around maximizing profits for themselves, and little else. As we have seen, chasing the goal of maximizing profit for its own sake can have disastrous effects in times of uncertainty, when everything doesn't go exactly according to plan. If we are to prosper as a species, we need to set rules for stores that sell things essential to life, concerning how much they need to stock at once, and how many day's supply they must hold at any one time. Remember that, once upon a time, store didn't mean "place that sells sells things", but "place where things are stored".