1) The Logistics company IS a market, not simply a component of other markets. The fact that is has been streamlined to the point of brittleness is the result of "free market" forces. There is no denying that.
OK, I'll just refute it. :-)
The logistics business is definitely it's own business, but even it is dependent on infrastructure, here specifically the ports. Ports are government run. It's been noted that the US ports are the some of the least efficient in the world.
So, no, I am not going to blame the free market for a failure of government in managing ports. :-)
"2) Domestic fabrication would require new facilities to be built as the companies who are mostly overseas want to exercise a large amount of control over their production. There are means of doing so in foreign markets that are simply illegal in the states, so they’ll be looking to build there own facilities if anything. (This is part of the reason these things were outsourced to begin with)"
No need to argue this point; you have your theory, I have mine. All we have to do is watch this chart over the next twelve months (the supply chain problems are projected to continue well into next year) and we'll see what happens.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA
"3) supply chain diversification won’t touch the US anyway ....."
We're talking past each other. When I said "supply chain diversification" what I mean is "dont have 100% of your mfg coming from China." It's obviously too risky for the corporation when the US and China are sabre-rattling at each other.
There are no shortage of places in this world that will build Nike's sneakers at low cost. An additional bonus is that some of them would more logically ship to eastern ports. Ports in Houston and New Orleans have huge capacity and they are not overworked right now.
"4) you have a fundamental misunderstanding of 2008. It was the repeal of specific government regulations that allowed banks to make riskier loans, and over leverage themselves in the stock market, leading to the 2008 crash. It was a LACK of oversight and regulation that caused that event."
If there's one thing in this world that I do NOT have, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of 2008. :-) Good Lord, I lived and breathed the data on that for nearly half a decade.
Anyway, you missed my point entirely. I totally agree that it was unwise deregulation of banking principles that we inherited, in some cases, from 17th century England that precipitated the events.
What I was referring to is the fact that the government, instead of ending "too big to fail" by unwinding some of the interconnected elements of the financial system, codified it into law by guaranteeing future bailouts to systemically important institutions. This incents risky financial behavior on the part of institutions. The large banks have been curbed a bit by stress testing, but the perverse incentives were not ended.
Point here is that any governmental action which lessens the pain corporations feel when bad decisions are made simply incents them to continue their bad behavior, as long as it is profitable to do so. You want THEM to feel the pain when they fail, not the taxpayer.
"5) were regulation shines is in mitigating or preventing problems that don’t have an immediate feedback cycle"
Obviously sane regulations are required, but again, the proximate problem here is port efficiency. The ports are moving to 24/7 operations (which is very expensive, of course) because that's all they can do; the efficient ports of the world have automated these functions and manage logistics with intelligent systems. Simply adding brute force is not a long term solution.
