The shortages due to "supply-chain problems" are due to "just-in-time" processing. The article mentions other shortages of goods that have the same cause.

In addition, we have seen a similar problem due to reducing the number of hospital beds to the level that tends to be needed in a normal year. That too is an example of optimizing the efficiency in the usual case by reducing the slack needed to handle unusual cases.

I suspect that the delay in shutting off the Huntington Beach oil leak was due to optimizing for the usual case — the "no leak today" case. Why pay for the extra equipment and staff just to save a few hours, in some case, in detecting a leak and shutting it off?

Every day, advertising urges us to do the opposite of what climate defense requires, and tries to reshape our values to make "more consumption" paramount.

*Halt destruction of nature or risk "dead planet," leading businesses warn.*

A Singapore journalist says that Singapore's new law, allowing the government to restrict anyone by calling per a channel for "foreign interference" based on ungrounded suspicion, and giving the target no chance to object in court, will make it very hard to operate.

*The Tories have persuaded voters [that "woke" is] a threat worse than fuel shortages.*

Republicans are using the same approach in the US: using imaginary or exaggerated bugaboos to distract Americans from the real threats such as Covid-19, racism, climate mayhem, and starving the poor.