this isnt a false analogy. what if you and your friends also just went to produce and stockpile steel, and refused to purchase food in favor of buying more inputs for steel?
there is an optimal amount of steel production. more steel is not better when there are better alternatives, like food production.
alternatively, you can simply not produce steel and buy it directly from china instead, where they can produce it for cheaper because the cost of labor is low and they are better at it. then the optimal amount of steel production is zero. producing steel yourself is a waste of effort because you can produce something else, sell that to china and buy steel from them, which is better for everyone. this is the case today. please dont prop up the american steel industry.
It's not a matter of struggling to make money. The value they could've sold the steel at was far more than the cost of producing it. The economy took a hit because their profits were less than projected. This is solely a problem with capitalism. How are you so dense this very basic example doesn't make sense to you?
its like if ur playing dota 2 and u rush first item manta style on antimage. buying yasha and ultimate orb now rather than later is bad for the economy. it has the opportunity cost of not buying battlefury.
same thing with producing steel now rather than later, when you already have too much steel. the economy expects you to be efficient. if ur not efficient yes the economy is hurt because it was working with the projection that you would be efficient.
yes, ur right. the economy was hurt because their profits are less than projected. but their profits reflect the value of their work to the whole system. people who buy steel are willing to pay for steel in proportion to the usefulness of the steel.
the measurement of the economy has already internalized the expected production of value. when less value is produced than expected (because you have too much steel) the numbers will go down, yes.
You just fucking said earlier that the outsourcing of industry is a bad thing. Like holy fucking shit history proves that outsourcing industrial jobs just gets rid of those jobs: it doesn't create new jobs in some other industrial sector.
I really wonder how people like you even function when you're clearly too stupid to breathe without consciously thinking about it
its like if u made an agreement with ur friend that u would work together or something next week, but in the meantime u spent all ur time producing steel and starved to death. then ur friend is hurt because he cant work with you and instead theres all this useless steel lying around.
roughly, this is why businesses failing hurts the economy.
ONLY WITHIN THE FUCKING SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM. THATS THE FUCKING POINT! ITS FUCKING BACKWARDS!
An abundance of a product that can still be traded at fucking labor cost to make other things is a fucking good thing, because the fucking value comes from how useful it is and how much labor was put in you absolute moron
i prefer cheap steel to giving people jobs. it seems equivalent to tariffing the steel, taxing companies who benefit from cheap steel, and mailing checks to steelworkers. but idk if its efficient to worry so much about details when u can just tax everyone and mail checks to everyone 
if u want to do welfare that is.
You are so fucking stupid it's astounding. The steel isn't fucking useless. It's still able to be sold for far more than the cost of producing it. Just less than projected. If it's still incredibly profitable and there's a shitload of it and it's fucking useful then there should be no fucking problem, but there is under capitalism
You are such a fucking dumbass, yet you keep talking like you understand things. You really need to accept how fucking stupid you are and try (and likely fail) to educate yourself
its about alternatives. you can have an abundance of steel, or you can have less steel and more of something else, by allocating labor and resources differently. how do you propose we choose?
That's because you're a fucking dumbass who doesn't understand that this is exactly why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer: the rich can buy more for less and the poor don't have fucking jobs anymore
This isn't fucking zero-sum
No you fucking idiot, that's not how it works. You can't just magically take people from one industry and have them immediately work in another for the one year where profits are down (but still high). And fucking history shows that shutting down factories doesn't bring new jobs: it just means more people unemployed and more people with shittier jobs
I've only read half the conversation and barely that half at that but sounds like you guys are having some basic problems with supply and demand
a new challenger appears
have you all considered reading more books
Guess what. The problem of resource allocation is solved. It is called the market
Humans interfere in the market -> creation of inefficiencies, corruption, famine etc due to incompetence
Tried and tested
the idea of capitalism is allocation of labor and resources to produce the "correct amount" of steel. yes. producing more steel is better than leaving the resources idle (until it isnt).
this example is probably cheating but back in soviet russia and commie china they thought more steel=better and then lots of people starved to death because they were inefficiently allocating resources and labor.
Nope. The most successful corporations are highly centrally planned. Central planning works:
Utter bullshit. This is only true in the abstract conception of capitalist economics, which is based on a shitload of highly suspect and unjustified assumptions.