| Times they are a-changin’, for sure. World-renowned economist Gabriel Felbermayr said recently that globalization is over. With Russia doing its own thing economically since it invaded Ukraine, Felbermayr predicts the world will be “broken off into distinct economic blocks, dominated by the West, China, and Russia”. He says that the Ukraine conflict (and we would add, the pandemic before it) has shown that being reliant on other nations for things, especially food and energy is a risky business. A piece from Michael Lind at Tablet has pulled on that thread a little more. Lind argues that there is a new Cold War afoot, between nations that focus on resources and manufacturing versus those that celebrate the making of “apps and loans”. He raises concerns that the Western elites’ push for a “green” future is a bit of a delusion. Can we innovate, electrify and digitize life if there are no raw materials to work with? As much as we may fancy we can go on indefinitely, doing the elevated work of pushing bytes around, the physical world we inhabit is still the [literal] foundation of what we build. Lind suggests that if America doesn’t recover the ability to produce more of what it needs, it had best pick better friends. |
