Deindustrialization and Vulnerability

The manufacture of a host of very basic products are concentrated in a few vulnerable places. For example, the Japanese Tsunami caused a global shortage of broadcast-quality videotape. Stroller writes,

"much of the production for critical products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a patchwork global network of suppliers all over the world in unstable regions, over which we have very little control. An accident or political problem in any number of countries may deny us not just iPhones but food, medicine or critical machinery.

The re-engineering of our global supply chain needs to happen-and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse. This means that our government and our society needs to reorient our economy toward manufacturing and rededicate our corporations to productive uses."