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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 02:08:24 :
In Reply to: nothing good was made after 1967 posted by mannyc [173.77.232.12] on Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 00:09:07 :
The only way this game works is because of cheap shipping. There's a reason why back in the days of sailing ships about all that was traded between the US and China was tea, gold, opium, silk, and furs. It cost a lot to ship stuff so only stuff that was extremely valuable for its size was shipped. For now we have globalization and we'll keep having it as long as shipping is cheap and there are countries with a billion people willing to work for a couple dollars a day under totalitarian governments that can manipulate their monetary policy so they can't afford to buy anybody else's stuff,but everybody else thinks their stuff is dirt cheap. Japan used to be that way, but they're not any more. Maybe eventually the Chinese won't feel like working their butts off for a bowl of rice and some other country like India will take over. Maybe the Africans will finally quit fighting and stealing from each other and they'll be the next cheap manufacturing place.
If the oil runs out first, however, it won't matter. If wages are already so small that most of the final cost of the product is raw materials, shipping, and profit, then an increase in shipping cost has to get passed right along the line to the consumer and cutting wages to zero wouldn't make any difference. When that happens, it starts to make sense again to start making things locally. Of course then we'd have to also accept that manufacturing is dirtier and more dangerous than pushing bits around in a computer in some Manhattan office tower. We'd also have to accept that when we're making things for each other, we're going to have to pay a lot more money and be able to afford a lot less stuff. There's no denying that slaves are economical.
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