| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago |
| You can make this same argument about a great number of things. Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Indeed we got caught short of vaccines recently, and had some nontrivial consideration of running a military op against NATO member over it. |
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| ▲ | matt727 a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| The food example, is the exact reason for large farming subsidies in the European Union. These were implemented as a founding initiative, due to the experience of food shortages during the second world war.
A great number of things could be considered critical. Due to the nature of when access could be cut off, the main thing countries likely worry about being able to access, is things humans need to stay alive, and things needed to wage war. |
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| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago | parent [-] | | Farming subsidies are one of the most criticized parts of the EU. My comment isn't in support of it. But even so, subsidy is quite different from compulsory purchase. The question is: why is steel special. Not in a no-action-vs-some-action way, but why so aggressive? Ironically I think it's the same for both steel and farmers: they provide votes. | | |
| ▲ | XorNot a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Because like, every basic war machine is made from it? Like how is this a question? There's been two world wars and access to or stockpiling of steel has been a critical strategic factor in both. Most consumable military assets are made from steel, for example and it underpins most machine tools and factory components as well. | | | |
| ▲ | handelaar a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For lots of reasons but if you're the UK and you're honest with yourself and you are only allowed to pick exactly one reason that steel is absolutely critical? Royal Navy. | | | |
| ▲ | AngryData 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Farming subsidies are the only way to prevent famine, the granary system sort of works, but regularly resulted in shortages and famines throughout every empire in history. Even not accounting for longer term climate trends, yield due to weather can vary up to 30% in a year, so it only makes sense to pay for a bit of over production so in the event of a couple bad years your food output is merely break even, and not 70% of needs. Its better to pay 5 cents more for a loaf now than pay $20 a loaf with rationing later, or if we went back to granary system possibly getting moldy food. | | |
| ▲ | benj111 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Isn't the point of rationing to prevent the loaf going to $20. | | |
| ▲ | lazide 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Usually no one tolerates rationing until it’s already at $20 a loaf. |
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| ▲ | remus a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Obviously there are a lot of important things you need to keep a country running, but steel is a key input a in a huge number of very important sectors (infrastructure, military, automotive etc.) so having some ability to produce your own steel seems a sensible hedge. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | Deukhoofd a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Food tends to be a lot easier to produce, and many countries do often subsidize their food production, as well as have mercantilistic policies to ensure food production is kept locally. Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again" |
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| ▲ | ben_w 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again" Gambler's fallacy will keep striking until we do better, won't it. | |
| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't really care for farm subsidies either, but even ignoring that: it's quite a different level of intervention than compulsory purchase. Same with the vaccines. We didn't respond to that crisis by nationalizing AstraZeneca. My rhetorical point is just that steel gets special treatment probably because it's politically expedient. There are large, politically-relevant parts of the country that are still emotionally tied to the idea that we're an industrial nation. People under the age of 30 still go on about Thatcher and the miners. There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway? | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway? The more I learn about steel, the more I realise it's not one single thing but a whole collection of different families of things, each with different tradeoffs. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-strength_low-alloy_steel#... | |
| ▲ | vablings 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | One big thing about steel is actually traceability, certain industries require very specific steels. One example that always comes to mind is Sheffield Forgemaster's who are one of the few places in the world that can make absolutely gargantuan sized castings for nuclear reactors and marine equipment |
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| ▲ | XorNot a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Vaccines aren't something you need urgently in a crisis. A wartime effort has to keep supplies moving daily, or the front collapses. Whereas the need for vaccines is heavily deferred - your population is already vaccinated in peacetime, and you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war, nor vaccinate new population during one either: that large vaccinated population providing herd immunity gives you a lot of runway for children with less access. | | |
| ▲ | 8note 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | you definitely want flu vaccines for your infantry, lest they get captured or killed en mass due to fever on a similar note, medical supplies and logistics are a huge deal for going to war, to handle casualties | |
| ▲ | pjc50 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Vaccines aren't something you need urgently in a crisis .. what were you doing in 2020? > you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war The lab leak people are probably wrong, but in the present era we're a lot closer to "hook AI up to a CRISPR machine and generate a biological weapon" than we have ever been. Everyone seems to assume that we might get in a war that we recognize and can fight with the tools of WW2, ships and tanks, rather than a war we don't recognize fought with weapons we don't understand and have no counter for. Or, more likely, simply get bought out at the top. Why fire a missile when you can buy a political party for a mere £5m? | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > .. what were you doing in 2020? Waiting several years for widespread vaccine availability, and practicing good hygiene and social distancing. Viruses aren't so good at seizing and holding territory. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As I recall, the economic damage of the pandemic was ~ "it's worth spending ten billion dollars to make the vaccinations arrive one day sooner": https://www.newsweek.com/operation-warp-speed-what-deal-opin... (And that was just the cost to the USA, not the world as a whole). | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which does not change the fact that the pandemic was a peacetime crisis where it was possible but not practical to keep most systems running if needed. Coronavirus wasn't bullseyeing vaccine shipments in the Pacific or taking down air freighters. EDIT: I mean I don't know why you think this is a catch-22: countries pursue both capabilities, and the UK has a pharmaceutical industry and on shore manufacturing capabilities. Whereas many industrialized nations are struggling to keep steel making capabilities on shore and running. So why is steel special? Because currently it's the one we're in danger of losing (and much harder to ship globally even if you have allies). |
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| ▲ | toast0 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Viruses aren't so good at seizing and holding territory. Neither is infantry that's sick with the flu, which may have been a factor in the ending of of WWI. Tis hard to practice good hygiene and social distancing in the trenches. If one side had better access to vaccines or access to better vaccines in a conflict during a pandemic, it would be significant, regardless of how the pandemic came about. |
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| ▲ | timschmidt 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The lab leak people are probably wrong https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Qu... | | |
| ▲ | defrost 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is indeed the testimony of Steven C. Quay, one of "the lab leak people" that are asserted by GP to be probably wrong. Very few people would claim that there is no testimony for the lab leak claim, it's simply that relatively few domain scientists support that claim. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Quay * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory | | |
| ▲ | timschmidt 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > relatively few domain scientists support that claim I spent a decade at a national Science and Technology Research Center responsible for a twelfth of NSF's research budget. We studied biology at all scales and the algorithms it uses to solve difficult problems. I've looked for holes in Quay's testimony and didn't find any big ones. Most of his claims seem to be independently verified. One thing I can say from my decade of experience is that scientists are not dumb people, and are acutely aware of how their work is perceived, and the connection that has to their research funding. You'll find as many scientists warning about the dangers of lax lab regulation as you will coal miners warning about climate change. Private conversations are very different. | | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | What kind of expertise should you possess to be able to comment on a lab theory? Even if lab leak is true, what is the proposal, that we do not study viruses at all? | | |
| ▲ | timschmidt 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What kind of expertise should you possess to be able to comment on a lab theory? Enough. > Even if lab leak is true, what is the proposal, that we do not study viruses at all? People love to think in black and white. All on or all off. It is metabolically inexpensive to reduce reality to the binary. But reality is all the colors in between. To the best of anyone's ability to reconstruct the events which led to the outbreak (I think Quay makes a compelling case in that testimony which summarizes a great deal of investigative work by others) many things went wrong. Many of which were predictable. Many choices were made. All that suggests opportunity to reduce risk through less extreme means: restricting gain of function research to higher-BSL labs, removing those labs further from population centers, more closely monitoring inflows and outflows around such research, changes are possible in the review and approval process, the list of possibilities is extensive. What would your motivation be for seeing it any other way? | | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Enough. So someone with expertise in other non relevant fields is enough? Yet people that have expertise in relevant fields dispute his conclusions and its not relevant somehow? | | |
| ▲ | timschmidt 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You really like to stand up incorrect assumptions to argue against. Second time you've done so in this short interaction. Not a word yet about your motivation. Huh. You'd think anyone out here demanding others' credentials would lead by presenting their own. | | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not your credentials specifically, but Steven Quay. Cursory search suggest he's not an expert in relevant fields, but does have a book about lab leak theory. Immediately suspicious as there are a lot of scientists that turn to grifting in areas that were not relevant to their expertise. | | |
| ▲ | timschmidt an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't much care what the man does with his free time. I'm more interested in the veracity of his statements. On that front he supplies copious references to peer reviewed research by numerous others and primary sources. Character assassination is for folks who can't argue on the merits. You still haven't offered your own credentials. |
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| ▲ | 1970-01-01 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow. It's more critical than food, which you can grow. Same for vaccines. |
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| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago | parent [-] | | > Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow Right, and where is the iron coming from in the scenario where we can't import steel? | | |
| ▲ | 1970-01-01 a day ago | parent [-] | | As it is top-critical, you're recycling it, opening new mines, and taking it by force. | | |
| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago | parent [-] | | Don't most of these contingencies apply to steel in the first place? | | |
| ▲ | 1970-01-01 a day ago | parent [-] | | Nope. The entire point here is facing the decision on which of these contingencies will apply. | | |
| ▲ | 0x3f a day ago | parent [-] | | Why can't steel be recycled or taken by force? | | |
| ▲ | wongarsu a day ago | parent [-] | | Recycling steel uses by and large the same industrial sites as making new steel. Most new steel has some amount of recycled steel mixed in, the trick is getting the ratios of various types of scrap right | | |
| ▲ | 8note 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | ok but in the bad situation, your steel is at the bottom of the ocean. how are you recycling that? |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Countries that import large shares of their food and medical supply chains are constantly trying to develop domestic capacity. |
