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Except there are situations such as this one where it doesn't matter how cooperative countries are. Even China was unable to produce enough medical supplies for their own needs, much less for the entire world. The US and Europe absolutely need to rebuild their industrial capacity to be able to cover their own needs in crisis situations. Anything else is just insanity.


I think your comment illustrates just precisely what a huge amount of effort and time it's going to take to get people to reorient their thinking along these lines.

"China" doesn't produce anything; human beings standing on the landmass called China produce medical supplies, just as human beings on other landmasses produce medical supplies. Recipients of medical supplies need more than can be supplied by Earth's manufacturers right now, as well as supply/demand scoped within specific regions or countries. That has nothing to do with countries or regions, any more than it has anything to do with which US state or city a factory is in.

I do agree that we should avoid excessive centralization of the manufacture of certain essential items, medications and medical supplies (and advanced/low power CPUs, and passenger aircraft) among them, but not for nationalistic reasons—simply because the Earth is big, transport is wasteful and resource-intensive (even if economically cheap), and resources are sometimes scarce/precious, such as in emergencies or supply interruptions (e.g. melt-blown fabric producing machines are time-consuming to produce).

It's nothing to do with the nationality of the people who produce the supplies, or the nationality of the people who need the supplies.

Perhaps the UN or another international body could coordinate ensuring that a certain amount of manufacturing capacity for various and specifically enumerated essential things could be carefully maintained on each continent, to guard against planet-scale civilizational collapse in rare events. I think in the old model this would be termed something like a "national security stockpile" or "strategic reserve" but ultimately it's more of a "civilization continuity capacity". Essential medicines and equipment are essential medicines and equipment, regardless of which humans need them, or where.




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