Globalization

[snousle]

Here is an unusually interesting article about globalization and why nobody profits from betting on apocalypse.

It's one of the few things I've read that takes both the pro- and anti- arguments seriously. Interesting quote: Almost every financial bubble has involved nothing more nor less than a serious miscalculation about the true probability of successful globalization.

Comments

[bikerbearmark.livejournal.com]

Great article - thanks, A! The eschatological approach (yes, I snuck that word in there JUST FOR YOU) seems like an interesting paradigm for evaluating future decisions as well - but the sobering conclusion that pre-bust "opportunities" may not actually equate very well to post-bust opportunities serves as a reminder that prognostication is hard and not for the faint of heart or pocket book.

Speaking of which, in a flattened, globalized world, how is a very location-based business such as your new enterprise going to compete? It strikes me that in the end you are selling temporary use of the land along with your services to go with it, but there's a lot of land out there also trying to draw guests; what differentiates your offering?

Yeah, you know it - I'm asking myself exactly the same thing both about my existing income streams as well, and not necessarily liking the answers I come up with. Oh brave new world...

[mellowtigger]

I dunno. He states "...every path away from globalization will end in catastrophe." I don't buy it.

I think globalization is a natural increase in complexity, but I still think there are ways to survive quite happily without it. When biological systems get separated from larger organizations (rising oceans, continental drift), they undergo great change but they don't (as a rule) just outright fail because of the separation. I tend to think of economic systems as just another kind of biological system. (Thanks to "The Nature of Economies" by Jane Jacobs.) Evolution occurs in all of them. Isolation can produce beautiful new products. I don't believe that globalization is a necessary future.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

My business is not really about "use of the land". Accommodation here is mostly a perquisite for clients, and a marketing tool for the catering business. I don't intend to run as a guesthouse in the near future.

I have, as far as I can tell, no competitors; I'm effectively putting all my assets into something that has very low ROI but is low-risk and sustainable. Pretty much anyone that has the assets to do what I'm doing is using them to make a lot more money than I'm making.

The business is all about doing things that cannot be done at a larger scale. Luxury service is only as good as the weakest link; the larger the enterprise, the more vulnerable it is to flaws. Part of that is personal service, exquisite aesthetics and cultural sensibility, which almost by definition cannot be outsourced, imported, or commodified, except at terrible expense.

I've come to realize that at least half of my service will be as a kind of culinary gigolo. Sitting down to tea and a long conversation with my clients (who are very often often educated, wealthy, but lonely professional women) is a big chunk of the value. My clients aren't just wanting a dinner party, they're wanting to breach the divide that alienates them from their service providers and makes them feel guilty about their wealth. They want to believe that they live in a world where service is a sacrament, not a means of exploitation. So that's what I'm giving them.