I trust I’m not straying too far off topic by referencing something that has been a mantra of mine for at least a couple of decades. It is this: The silicon chip, the Sputnik and the Boeing 707 changed the world irrevocably and profoundly.
Perhaps those even older than I (is that possible??) might say it was Charles Babbige’s difference engine, Werner von Braun’s V2 and the de Havilland Comet but it’s all semantics. Those three things, in combination, served to shrink the world, to give rise to a population explosion that still hasn’t petered out and, most significantly, made life very difficult for advanced democracies.
Markets, which at one time were almost exclusively national markets, have been redrawn and changed forever by globalisation. The company in Sydney, Coventry or Cleveland quietly making spanners and tools and paying its skilled and loyal workers a fair wage has been dynamited by the broken down shed in Beijing turning out inferior spanners made by people who are paid little and have no access to health care, workplace safety protocols, holidays, sick leave or any sort of advocate for their well being. All this in a self-described people’s paradise which manipulates the yuan to make the product even cheaper for overseas sales. Not that the workers understand this or could do anything about if they did. And all the time we in Australia talk about even playing fields.
I am not commenting on the rights or wrongs of this but I am saying that you and I, Steph, over our six decades, have lived through change even more massive than our ancestors saw during the Industrial Revolution 200 plus years ago. Future historians will note this and perhaps they will call it the Silicon Revolution.
The world in which we live has been enormously disrupted by these profound changes. It has challenged all we grew up understanding about commerce, politics, science and community values and expectations and now we are seeing it is most of the western economies. Look at the foment in British politics and their utter confusion about their place or not in the EU. Look at the political landscape in - where do I start - France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and then there’s the former Eastern bloc countries. Japan, having only risen from the ashes in our lifetime, has been suffering from this disruption for the last 20 years.
Amazing. Australia, a small player, has been able to behave like a large and prosperous economy for a hundred years due in part to its isolation and its resources but the silicon chip, the Sputnik and the Boeing 707 changed all that big time and look at our political situation. I venture that nearly all of the citizens in Australia despair at nearly all of the politicians on offer.
And so we get to the USA, the economic, military and political bulwark the world has known and relied on since the early 20th century.
On the one side we have a powerful lobby based in DC and all interlinked with the Clintons right at the centre of it. On the other side we have a fraudulent and wealthy bully who has no problem in exploiting the fears and confusion which understandably trouble the American lower and middle classes. 35% of US wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. The bottom 80% own a paltry 15 % of the wealth. Trump knows this. Does he care? We may get to find out over the next four years.
Whatever.. middle America, like middle Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, is both scared and confused.
Were I an American voter, I wouldn’t be anywhere near happy with either candidate. I simply wouldn’t know what to do on November 8. Isn’t that sad.
Cheers,
Gary from Australia
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