January 10, 2024

Globalization is not being viewed or reported realistically due to a lack of awareness on the nature of technology and how it is produced.

Globalized Trade became a necessity with increased complexity of technology based on silicon chips. That means so-called manufacturing jobs went the way of horse harnesses. Modern technology doesn't involve sticking bolts in holes.

Yet the subject is discussed in horse harness terms, as if manufacturing jobs could not only have been saved but brought back twenty five years later with drastic evolution of the complexities.

Not the least thing being missed is that two or three billion more workers were needed with globalization. Then the increased workers meant increased consumers for the products.

The evolution of technology in that direction could not be stopped. Complex technology cannot be produced in one country. In fact those countries that tried to nationalize their production were taken out of the global process and left behind economically. Most extremely, of course, was Japan. It was leaving everyone else behind during the 1990s with copy machines and cameras. But they weren't oriented for globalizing; and their technology disappeared.

With globalization, the components of products are now produced in more than one country. Component production is now highly specialized. With more consumers, narrower lines of products are produced by each company.

That's evolution of complexity. No one turns the clock back on any form of evolution. Yet arguments are still based on nationalization of production and ancient manufacturing concepts.

Along with globalization of technology goes globalization of related sociology and politics. Yet Trump redesigned trade agreements for beating everyone up to get a better deal. All he did was destroy supply chains.

Trump also wants to manipulate trade through import tariffs. He can't be told that all he does with tariffs is take U.S. producers out of the process. Import tariffs are the equivalent of a sales tax, which makes U.S. products more expensive and less competitive. Trump assumes China will pay the tariffs and send money into the U.S. treasury. Ignorance is expensive.

Also being missed is the relevance of production ecology. A biological plant can't grow on nutrients located someplace else. Even during the 1980s, some electronic components were being produced in Japan. The data sheets were meaningless to anyone in the U.S. Electronic components cannot be used without data sheets showing the details of the characteristics. The same is true of all technological complexities.

That means "bringing the manufacturing back" is beyond stupidity. The manufacturing that left doesn't exist anymore. It didn't leave on a whim; it can't be brought back on a whim. Manufacturers kept saying they had no choice about leaving. They mentioned the shortage of workers, but there were a thousand reasons why evolving technology could not be produced in the wrong place. Parking lots alone were emblematic. You can't create parking spaces for five billion workers. Length of supply chains also matters, when hundreds of components need to be shipped in, timely, without disruption and at competitive prices.

Conservatives operate by the ethic of force and violence. They expect to push their weight around in controlling the world, as if they were fighting the War of 1812. It doesn't work for globalized trade.

When U.S. automakers couldn't get chips, the chip produces said they would rather build chips for toys. It's their prerogative. Force and violence won't fix that problem.

Conservatives still assume Trump knows how to run a business and that's how he should run the world. He bankrupted everything he touched trying to get a better deal by beating everyone up. He lives on handouts, selling cloth for donations.

Modern technology is very demanding to produce. It takes a lot of rationality to produce it. Force and violence destroys rationality. It has the purpose of destroying rationality, because rationality exposes corrupters for what they are.