Saturday, August 13, 2011

How America Could Collapse



Matt Stoller

Scarce domestic manufacturing leaves the United States highly vulnerable to accidents and problems abroad.
A few months ago, a friend in the entertainment industry told me of a new business model in Hollywood: hoarding videotapes. Apparently, the earthquake in Japan knocked offline a Sony factory that makes certain types of tape. That factory was also in the tsunami zone, so now there’s a serious tape shortage threatening the television industry. The NBA scrambled to get enough tape to broadcast the NBA finals; one executive told the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s like a bank run.”…..
Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm—the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. In 2004, for instance, England closed one single factory, which caused the United States to lose half of its flu vaccine supply……

4 comments:

  1. lolol. Could collapse? It did collapse. Shit already hit the fan, now it's just a matter of the snowball reaching the bottom of the hill.

    The western world will heat up to the point where state establishments will become irrelevant and the governments won't be able to afford police.

    Law and order will flip upside down. Drug dealers, pedophiles, rapists, thieves, and whores will become more brazen and fearlessly exploit themselves. People will get more violent, kids will have no point on planning out a future. And otherwise decent citizens will stoop to low level behavior.

    Small communities where people know each other more will do better than other places. Farms might be dangerous to be on, however, since farms will be targeted by large groups of desperate people.

    A few decades at the least before this rock bottom is over and society starts to get stable again. Of course, a good portion of humanity might be killed off in the process.

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  2. My brother went to the local John Deere dealer to buy a lawn mower.
    They did not have one.
    They did not know when they would get one either.
    A Briggs & Stratton powered lawnmower was not to be had.
    The reason given:
    Can't get parts out of Japan.

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  3. 3:26
    Why didn't he buy Chinese made lawn mower instead? It isn't not like he can smoke lawn. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. tape? I simply stunned they still use tape. I thought it was all digital.

    ReplyDelete

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