Globalization Makes No Sense
Shipping stuff half way around the world isn’t good economics, it’s a waste of energy.
I lived in San Francisco, I often would marvel at the movement of goods
through the ports across the bay in Oakland. Full container ships would
enter the bay one after another and unload their cargo, which
ultimately would be making its way to the many big box stores throughout
the country. After a day or two parked in the bay, the ships would head
back out across the Pacific Ocean to pick up more goods from the
factories in Asia and bring them to the US and other rich countries for
consumption. For those living in the bay area (or in any other major
port city), this movement of goods seems very normal and has become
simply a fact of life.
But I always wondered why human beings are
engaging in a process to manufacture goods thousands of miles away from
where they would ultimately be consumed. Was it because it was not
possible to assemble them locally? No. Was it because the materials used
in the production of those goods could not be found in the United
States? Perhaps in a few cases this is true. But that isn’t the main
reason why this practice continues.
“Globalization isn’t ‘cheaper’, it just hides its true costs.”
