The author provides an excellent portrayal of the vulnerabilities that globalized capitalism presents to current societies. The author takes a quintessential liberal view on this subject: liberals are good at assessing the bad consequences of the system on society, but they usually carefully avoid references to the underlying system whose profit-dynamic inevitably drives such consequences. Hence, the author arrives at a very naive conclusion to his otherwise excellent analysis:
The re-engineering of our global supply chain needs to happen—and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse. This means that our government and our society needs to reorient our economy toward manufacturing and rededicate our corporations to productive uses. This will require a new conception of antitrust laws to ensure that monopolistic or oligopolistic practices in pivotal industries aren’t placing our culture at risk. It means understanding the networks of suppliers and sub-suppliers. And it means ending the race to the bottom that pushes deflationary pressures on labor and the social safety net. All of this can insure a more robust culture and economy, one which can withstand national security or environmental challenges. The sooner our leaders, both in public and private institutions, recognize how highly vulnerable we are to a societal collapse, the better chance we have of avoiding collapse.He apparently didn't believe Margaret Thatcher who presented the core belief of capitalists: "there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and families." And, they believe that there is no alternative to the private enterprise way of reaping their profits--this is actually correct. Only a new system based on truly social values will be able to create a healthy functioning society. It would be ridiculous for us to wait for this profit-addicted class of people to create such a society.
