NODE 3
New dynamics
of consumption
from soil protection to the revision of the concept of globalization
from soil protection to the revision of the concept of globalization
and new systems for creating products
One of the fundamental elements for analyzing the Covid 19 epidemic consists in understanding the processes that have favored its birth, diffusion and permanence in all the world states.
To observe the nature of this virus outside the purely epidemiological sphere, in fact, it is necessary to accept a reflection on the consumption methodologies that we are used to experimenting. This implies a prediction on how these same factors will be called to change in the short and medium term, so as to defuse that intertwining of elements and causes that could (statistical models tell us, and they are damned sure) present us with the account of a new pandemic in a very tight turn.
Let’s start with the concept of globalization. Whether it is understood as a predisposition to commercial or financial exchanges at a global level or as a vector of legalized exploitation that makes the transfer of personal autonomy and the increase in social disparities its barbaric fulcrum, whether you think of it in one way or in the other, I said, it is certain that this pandemic event will lead to redesign the contours in a forced way quickly.
When one thinks of globalization – if one neglects its cultural drifts and the imposition of models of standardized behavior – one usually insists on the problem of the delocalization of production.
In recent decades, a complex process has taken place in which – thanks to the low cost of transport – companies have preferred to move the production of all objects with a strong index of manual labor to more or less remote areas of the planet. Certainly in places where the labor cost was so low that on the one hand it was possible to reduce the final cost of the products, on the other hand to collect profits unthinkable until a few years earlier.
This pandemic has highlighted at least two flaws in this economic approach, which have appeared in all their plastic weakness. Let’s start with the first.
On the one hand, it was understood that the indiscriminate movement of people, products and semi-finished products – made by cramming ships, planes and trains along the arteries of the planet – produced very serious side effects. However, as long as these were limited to the introduction of some insects or animals into different ecosystems (an introduction that, it must be said, then produced tremendous consequences: from the destruction of crops to the subversion of entire ecosystems), we continued to think that it was a game worth playing, especially to protect those who, from this system of rules, made a lot of profit.
Today, however, that the movement of objects and people is associated directly with the vectors of virus diffusion, the delocalization risks entering a strongly recessive phase.
Then there is another factor that could accelerate the fall of this system, always looking at the mere economic context. This globalization crisis fits perfectly with ideas developed over the years that have given new value to concepts such as “artisan”, “zero kilometer”, “local”, “made in …”, so much so that a hierarchy of value that penalizes the delocalized products compared to those created in the most developed areas of the world.
Today, many top-of-the-range products (with the exception of the electronic sector and a few others) are newly developed and built in the western part of the world. This does not completely eliminate the problem of handling semi-finished products, but at least indicates a robust turnaround.
To all this is added a progressive reduction of the wage gap between the north and the south of the world (so as to make relocation less convenient) and the emergence of widespread robotisation processes – we have already talked about it – which aim to reduce the workforce and minimize the impact of human labor on the final cost of products.
But that’s not all: let’s move on to the second element that makes us reflect in this area. In recent years it has been understood that by brutally relocating the production of goods to developing countries or with low-value labor, the pool of companies capable of producing those same goods within national borders has effectively emptied.
Let’s take an example that we all know: that of medical PPE. Having become unavailable for much of this emergency, it has been discovered that masks and associated products are mainly produced in Asian countries, which are also affected by the epidemic. The relocation resulted in western nations suddenly finding themselves without protective equipment, medical machinery, everyday tools etc.
Having long since abandoned the local companies that normally worked in the production of medical devices, the western part of the world has found itself dependent on those same countries to which it has relocated. Due to a sort of Dante’s counterpoint – or as happens to a sovereign accustomed to entrusting heavy occupations to his subjects – the western countries have found themselves impoverished and emptied of that industry that would have allowed them to face the emergency with better timing.
Furthermore, the lack of a valid warehouse of goods prevented an adequate reaction to the epidemic from being structured, thus failing to protect the medical-hospital staff in a convenient way and subjecting it to a carnage which, with a more prudent industrial planning and a greater influx of PPE, could have been partially or totally avoided.
As in a game of causes and effects, this structural deficit has led to a permanent state of emergency which has led to the issue of draconian measures for the company, with the strategic halt of entire economic chains and the forced conversion of the few production structures available , which turned out to be expensive and slow.
Through a strange game of fate, those same companies that participated in the delocalization have had restrictive measures imposed that have limited and compromised their turnover. One could almost say that we are faced with a shining example of how the Butterly Effect theory has important roots in reality.
The example of the sharing economy then puts other food for thought on the bench. A crisis like this, which mainly affects the real world and citizens, also has serious repercussions on the way in which they view the sharing of goods and services. Giants such as Uber and Airbnb, for example, are now suffering from the distrust of people generated by the pandemic. It is complex to combine the mutual distance imposed by Covid 19 with a system in which objects, houses, services should be shared. It is therefore conceivable that this new “humanity of the distance” leads to having to rethink or update these business models too.
Whether it is embarking on a crusade towards the only excesses of globalization, or that the very structure of world capitalism is being questioned, the Covid 19 pandemic offers profound signals that have long been reported, especially by many Polanyian intellectuals who they don’t believe in the market’s ability to regulate itself.
And that therefore it is easy to predict the need, for the States, to intervene where financial distortions, oligo or monopolistic positions or violations of national decision-making autonomy in economic matters appeared.
In any case, we hope that one aspect of globalization remains: that of international cooperation. To understand this concept, it is enough to reflect on how the pandemic has been managed internationally.
In Europe, for example, we have seen different examples of reaction to the virus. There have been countries that have handled the pandemic very well, such as Germany. Others who have minimized or even avoided the lockdown, such as Sweden. Structurally prepared nations with solid healthcare and an emergency plan suitable for reducing the impact of the virus.
And then other countries, perhaps more exposed, perhaps first on the list, perhaps attacked by a more resistant viral strain, perhaps more polluted, may be. But perhaps also much less structured, despite the good intentions of governments, such as Italy. Countries with a public health system torn apart by years of subsidies to private sanitary system and unspeakable waste, unable to reflect serenely on problems. Countries deafened by a continuous, demeaning election campaign; busy talking about something else until an external event breaks into everyday life and puts decades of political rhetoric, speeches without depth and a soliloquy of banality passed off as real at the sedan.
Well: in this European context, where we have seen enormous differences in the reaction capacity of nations, what was the feeling of widespread cooperation? Have the stronger countries supported and supported those in difficulty? Did they send relief materials, doctors, essential goods? Did they go out of their way to support the mutual economic system, families, incomes? Have you experienced a feeling of immediate closeness between nations with a peaceful and effective exchange to share structures, goods, decision-making mechanisms? No, really. Not for now, at least.
Yet it would have been possible: the pandemic, as far as recorded in all States, has affected nations in very different times and ways. While Italy was in the epicenter of contagion, for example, many other countries were almost completely immaculate. They would have had time and a way to organize a sophisticated community assistance plan, perhaps with some specialized doctors and itinerant task force capable of moving between the affected countries to suggest protocols and methodologies. Providing emergency goods and favoring the distribution of equipment in priority order: first to the most needy countries and gradually to those already supplied or in any case who could wait a few days or weeks.
A global network of assistance against major catastrophic events is now a global need, like the selective consumption reduction measures we will discuss shortly.
The global economic and financial approach is not an unshakable moloch that humanity must accept as if it were an endemic feature of existence. On the contrary: it is a human phenomenon with a life cycle destined to last only for a certain period. Imagining the future is the primary task of a western part of the world called to overcome the contradictions of its interest groups and propose an alternative capable of posing itself in a secular and pragmatic way in the face of the future.
Collective socio-political analysis project on Covid 19. Post Coronavirus scenarios: opportunities and dead ends. What can we learn from the Covid 19 epidemic.
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Texts updated on May 4, 2020.
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