To the Polypropylene Makers

readthenotes1

There's a story of the US war machine making a bunker buster bomb back during the first Gulf war doing something similar... https://www.ausairpower.net/GBU-28.html

littlestymaar

> If the workers had been expected to do this for normal wages, this wouldn't have happened. I know some people really believe that people are only motivated by monetary incentives, but this isn't the reality of mankind. People do make sacrifice without monetary compensation all the time. (And many, many, did during covid) Unlike what microeconomics-obsessed people think, workers don't make sophistivated economic calculations, instead they mostly care about being treated fairly . And I glad people aren't like how microeconomics model them, because the world simply wouldn't work otherwise.

ansgri

Polypropylene is great: it revolutionized residential plumbing, at least in countries that adopted it (apparently not the US). With PP tubes you can weld any complex plumbing with like $50 worth of tools and minimum skills. The only drawback is significant thermal expansion, but they’re flexible enough that they won’t break even if you forget to design around that.

dsign

> The company would compensate them well: full wages for the whole time, even when sleeping, and a paid week off after. Only a week??? I mean, we are all going to be replaced with AI any day now, but were it not the case, I'm fully expecting to see an American company to offer, as a benefit, "we will collect and bring your remains to the workplace if you by accident die outside."

hilliardfarmer

Great article but it should have included some remarks about how unnecessary, fruitless and a waste of time and resources it all was. Are people on average still not able to accept the whole thing was idiotic from start to finish? The very idea masking ever helped a single person avoid getting covid is just stilly at this point, right? Otherwise we'd still be doing it or at least getting the vaccine, I don't know anyone that's gotten it the last 3 years. Article would have been better from the angle of, "look at all the stupid stuff people were doing, ha" not, "these people were HEROES!" At best they were misled, at worst, profiteer idiots.

londons_explore

One should consider how futures prices impact this economics model. This factory could afford to upscale because they could sell their product for a much higher price, and pay their workers much more to do so. However if they had already sold the factories output for the regular price via a futures contract (ie. 1 ton of polypropylene for delivery in June for $2000), then the story would be different. Futures contracts are widely used as a way to take the risk out of doing things, but the side effect is your economy loses all incentive to be flexible to changing needs.