I read an interesting article - well, the article wasn't interesting or good at all, but what it was about is. Essentially, the Australian government, after driving pretty much all of the manufacturing off shore has come to realize that,
"Hey, if global supply chains are disrupted, we're screwed mate".
And over the last couple years, that is what has happened with Covid and on top of this, there are trade disputes with China and more recently, the impact that the current "operation" (war) in Ukraine is having. So, the Prime Minister has outlined seven products that Australia should start manufacturing itself, at least for emergency needs.
• Semiconductors
• Agriculture chemicals
• Water treatment chemicals
• Telecommunications equipment
• Plastics
• Pharmaceuticals
• Personal protective equipment
Australians are becoming Industrial Preppers!
When working well, globalized supply chains can be highly efficient in many ways, but considering they are spread all over the world, they are very much centralized in the same way a production line is. You can have many stations along the line, but they are all part of the same chain, which makes them prone to the "weakest link" problem. The weakest link is more often than not, not the stations on the production line, but the centralized authorities that control them. Take away that authority and the market decides how it operates, keep the authority and the central hub decides, compounding one problem area systematically through the entire ecosystem.
As I have written about several times over the last year or more, the coming "war" is going to have a clear division between sides - the centralized and the decentralized. This is going to take many forms and touch on everything that is important to us as a species in the coming decade or so.
Using the current war fought in Ukraine currently as an example, it is pretty clear to see that this is a war of centralized control and given the option, the majority of people on either side wouldn't fight it without coercion. However, due to the centralized narratives and the potential for centralized punishment for non-compliance, people just "follow orders" and do what they have been told. If however Russia was "people owned" meaning a far greater degree of decentralized ownership and decision-making, they would never have organized any serious offensive against anyone - because decentralized systems are very hard to align and unify into one direction.
This inefficiency is a blessing and a curse, as while it going to war is highly unlikely when people have to finance and organize it themselves, it is also hard to organize anything that requires a lot of people to work together, doing many diverse tasks in order to meet a common goal.
But, this is also a strength of the design, because when that alignment does happen and the majority by in, each participant in the aligned group feels that they are not only participating, but also owning their decision to be part of the movement. Being an individual and choosing to cooperate, coordinate and collaborate is empowering. This is why when decentralized movements are successfully developed, they will move mountains.
But again, there are pros and cons here, as if the centralized narrative is able to push the masses into acting in a single way or, acting in a predictable way, that mass can be used to create all kinds of conditions that are sub-optimal for the benefit of participants. A lot of the internet movements have been commandeered in this way, hijacking the message and influencing the decision-making of participants and bystanders alike, creating division, rather than the conditions for collaboration, development and human excellence.
It looks disorganized, but it is incentive driven with centralized powers having the ability to control the narratives they target enough, that they are able to maintain and gain more power and control over the masses, whilst bleeding them dry of ownership. People think it is about money - it is not - it is about ownership of resources and they come in many forms.
It is great for a country like Finland to ramp up their education system and create a nation of knowledge workers like much of the western world has done, but the fact is that knowledge work only goes so far in the supply chain. At some point, manufacturing work has to be done, mining work, farming work, packing work. You can design the best chip in the world, but it is all theoretical until it is able to be produced and only useful to the designer if once it is produced, there is access to it.
When manufacturing and material supply chains are spread globally and often through high disparity of conditions, there are bound to be problems. When under centralized control, coercion (physical and economic) can be used to ensure supply, but eventually, after the continual process of "optimization" progresses that force increasingly poor conditions on suppliers of goods, service and labor, rebellion starts, coups become an option. At a single country level, we have seen this many times, where a government has been overthrown by force, but what is starting to happen now is the overthrowing of centralization as a concept itself.
What is happening in Australia is the realization that "renting" critical resources globally is fast becoming an unviable option and instead, ownership needs to return to Australia of key products and industries. While this looks like a centralization into a country (which it is) the ownership itself is decentralized throughout the country. This mitigates the risk of collapse through the loss of some points, as others can pick up the slack and as a whole, the entire network benefits. And even though there are a range of outcomes for individuals, the chance of a single individual becoming insanely wealthy is low, as in order to be successful, collaboration with other owners is needed, not renting just employees.
Decentralized ownership fundamentally changes the economy, as it gives everyone some skin in the game, making them responsible for their own outcomes to a far greater degree - from an economic decision-making perspective at least. When people control their own resources, in order to survive, they will look to cooperate with others locally and only once they have sorted themselves out to the point they can manage, they will look to do more than just survive and organize to work on larger projects. However, rather than forming a government of control, the move is made to form governance structures, where people can have ownership and make decisions for resource allocation and collaborative efforts still.
We are accustomed to this on Hive and whilst rudimentary and imperfect in many respects, it is a model that is going to be replicated and adjusted into many different iterations so that people have power over their resources, not the centralized authorities of today. As soon as people want to make a change in what they support, they can - meaning that the governance participants do their job, or get cut off economically. Of course, ion order to do this, information needs to be decentralized too, otherwise, those that control the communication networks, start to shape the narrative to serve themselves and influence owners to sell their stake and rent instead.
The war between centralized control and decentralized ownership isn't going to be fought in another country, it is going to be fought globally and like it or not, we are all participants on one side or the other. At some point, we are going to have to very actively choose which.
The supply chains of centralized financial control, are going to be broken by blockchains of decentralized financial ownership.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]