[jvm___]

Next time you eat a fast food item, think about how many people were involved or one step away from making that burger or sub.

Meat, bun, spices, ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, cheese, bacon...

Every one of those has hundreds ro thousands of people involved. Researched, seeds, planted, grown, harvested, collected, processed, quality controlled, containerized, packaged, distributed, opened, preparedz put on your bun, served.

All those steps have at least one person involved, plus management, plus sales, plus quality, plus food scientist research, plus people's tastes research. Plus the manufacturing of the tractors, packaging systems, quality control equipment, processing equipment... hundreds more people.

We eat like kings of old with hundreds of people working to feed us one meal, and we don't think anything of it.

[6502nerdface]

Your comment reminds me of Leonard Read's classic essay, "I, pencil" [1] about the many thousands of hands that make a simple pencil, all guided by local decisions and price signals, without a single mastermind.

[1] https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/

[nonethewiser]

That’s exactly what I was thinking, except I thought Milton Friedman was the source. Did not realize it pre-existed him.

[PhasmaFelis]

Thanks for linking this! I read the introduction and skimmed the text. The details of manufacturing such a simple object are fascinating, of course. I certainly agree that they demonstrate one of the reasons why centralized planning doesn't work.

Going from "central planning doesn't work" to "therefore we have proven that unregulated capitalism leads to utopia" is...odd.

[ethbr0]

The irony is that central planning would be more possible now than ever.

Previously, there was a data collection, storage, and processing limitation. Manual collection, entry, and early computers simply couldn't process quickly enough to continually model the economy at the requisite fidelity.

But now, we still have the human data reporting problem, where the storage, network, and computational resources are possible, but the first mile "getting true numbers, reliably" still prevents the implementation of an effective centralized system.

[csomar]

That's the economy right? We can take it a step further. If you are getting a burger from McDonalds, and you are using their self-service kiosk, there is a whole world/economy behind that. Software, Hardware, Touch Screens, CPUs, Connection, etc... If you are using an international card to process your order, there is a whole set of banks (throughout the world) involved in that particular and single transaction.

This kind of makes you think: All that efficiency comes at a cost (fragility). There should be contingencies to that. (ie: Cash acceptance is mandatory, at least one human kiosk, a list of close food suppliers that you can use in case your supply chain breaks, etc...)

[squeaky-clean]

This is a book excerpt that I originally found from an HN post ages ago. It's a fun read

https://www.howtoflyahorse.com/what-coke-contains/

Basically covers (not too deeply) how a 12-pack of Coke cans in your local grocer involved work on every continent except Antarctica. The book itself was pretty good too, but this was probably the best chapter.

[david422]

Reminds me of this commercial about not wasting food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5c2Z7EqQLQ

Follows the life of a strawberry that goes moldy in the refrigerator.. and how many steps it took to get it there for it to just go bad in the end.

[ksec]

That is what I have been stating on HN since the start of HN? Commodities are the basic fabric of our economy, but Silicon Valley ( and by extension on HN, ) treat it as if some simple, unimportant, easy to optimise and automate domain.

You would expect COVID could force them to learn or think about some of these things. But most still dont.