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Biotech / Medical : Coronavirus / COVID-19 Pandemic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (251)	3/26/2020 1:37:41 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 22886

Did FDR put bombs and bombers up for bids? To a great degree yes. The law that everyone wants Trump to be active on wasn't even passed until 1950. Which is not to say that controls were not put in place. Most esp. rationing, although that's not as directly relevant. Most relevant perhaps was that the car manufactures were told to produce for the war effort not new cars another point was that companies were required to license their designs to others. The winning company in a competition would benefit from winning but despite that it wasn't always the company that produced most of winning design. For many companies the government was the only buyer and there is some control inherent in that, bu they were not put under totally centralized control, and it would have been a bad thing had that been done. And that was a very different type of effort. As much as more medical equipment and protective gear are needed, we don't need to and shouldn't devote a third of our economy in the effort. Need a billion or so masks when we only have millions, fine order a billion and then maybe another. Need more catheters IV bags, etc. order them to. Make large guaranteed orders so that it will pay to retool or even build new factories if that's needed. Get as much of the federal, state, and local red tape out of the way so that work that would normally take months to years to start, starts in days to weeks. But trying to centrally plan the economy doesn't pay, even when only considering the specific desired end your planning for, much less when you consider that as bad as the problem is people have other wants and needs as well. Some of those wants and needs are going to have to wait, in some cases perhaps for quite awhile, but some can't wait, and the whole category doesn't just suddenly become unimportant.