This is maybe half right. The demand for short term maximization of profits over all others is really driven by being a public company and shareholders only being satisfied if they see gains that exceed the market even at the detriment of the long term viability of the company. The US stock market is better at accepting risk of than my country (Canada) where companies are really harshly punished by shareholders if they show any signs of reduced profits/revenue.

Keeping inventory down is one easy way to maximize the profit as you aren't accounting for unused inventory. While it is correct that this is risky in case of supply chain bottlenecks, holding lots of inventory isn't a good solution either, because the company is now holding the risk of unsellable inventory should there be an economic downturn and people aren't buying your goods. Either one could easily sink a company.

I don't have a great answer, but after what has happened over the past year, I think the solution has to involve manufacturing be better distributed throughout the planet. You greatly reduce the chances of "once in a century" events preventing your shipment of product if you can shift production elsewhere and rely on a distributed supply chain. This would be better environmentally as well as it would require significantly less shipping if things were manufactured near where they were consumed. The costs of implementing this and the complexity for companies to manage is just too high for this to practically happen.