Now apply this same reasoning to, say, hospital capacity.
Some things need to optimize for the ability to absorb peak load, not steady-state operating costs.
Some things need to optimize for the ability to absorb peak load, not steady-state operating costs.
The important part is not building the capacity in, it's remaining flexible and adapting to what happens.
At some point, flexibility requires extra capacity. You can't improvise when you're spending 100% of your resources on operations.
Perhaps the problem is defining a hospitals utility function as “optimizing money” rather than “optimizing a patient outcome”.
I agree that money is definitely a constraint, but I’m not sure it’s what should be optimized.
Same as everywhere else - largest demand on resources. For a hospital, the resources are staffing and equipment (rather than cpu/storage/ram). An MRI machine is cheapest when you have as many scans as possible for a given level of staffing - reducing the time per scan from 6mins to 5mins means that you can get 20 extra patients scanned per 8 hour shift (with one machine).
In support of the initial commenter's point ("Some things need to optimize for the ability to absorb peak load, not steady-state operating costs"), for hospitals, you need look no further than covid - horrendous health outcomes for routine things, because the capacity was soaked up dealing with respiratory virus. And if you disagree with that (you're wrong), look no further than a strong flu season - staffing capacity that is totally fine for a random august is nowhere near adequate. Or look at Saturday night in any Emerg - there's a huge peak in emergency medical situations from drunk people doing stupid things.