Thanks to science and technology we had a Green Revolution. Machines, better seeds and sorts, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides & etc. They enabled farmers to substantially increase the crop yields. A rare example where doing more with less holds true. The thing is that machines, better seeds, fertilizers, herbicides – they are not free. Those who could afford them had higher yields and could sell cheaper. The others could not compete and sold their land. Then migrated to the towns and cities. Rural exodus 2.0. It is no coincidence that the spread of favelas in Brazil coincided with the Green Revolution there. The tradeoffs? More and cheaper food for those who could afford it, more productive (and bigger) farms vs more unemployed, homeless and higher criminal rate. Could have this been avoided? Sure but that’s the thing with “revolutions” – they take a lot of time to happen but once they do, there’s no stopping them. No time to act, only reacting remains. Tradeoffs.
In 2000 US and China signed a trade agreement. That kick-started offshoring which we can interpret as yet another revolution – Globalization. The motto was (still is) “If it can be offshored, offshore it!”. Whole industries were offshored to China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Mexico, South America. The tradeoffs? Corporations could produce things cheaper, while (of course) selling them for the same price. The receiving countries got a way to fight poverty and unemployment. It’s better to have a 13 year old working 12h shifts for Nike, in a fucked up factory, than to do blowjobs on the corner, right? Right. Who could argue with that? Good thing that those factories and production lines were in free-trade zones. The latter guaranteed decades of minimal to no taxes for the corporations. Bad thing for the hosting countries, but hey, isn’t child prostitution worse? The one country that got it right was China of course. The tradeoff was entirely in China’s favour. In less than 30 years the country got so much industry that now is the biggest carbon emitter, has the biggest navy, is the 2nd biggest economy, managed to lift out of poverty more than half of its population and now is preparing to invade Taiwan. Awesome! US did not do bad either. It has 15 out of the 20 biggest companies in the world, has the biggest economy, highest GDP, most of the best (and expensive) universities, is at least 10 years ahead technology wise and… has biggest prison population from all democratic states (2+ million). Tradeoffs.
In 28 years the Internet users grew from ~25 million to ~5.6 billion, the number of websites from ~23 thousand to ~1.7 billion. People are more connected than ever, have more access to more information, yet the rift between people grows bigger every day. The vast data became noisy, got polluted. It has turned into entertainment, conspiracy theories, fake news and of course – porn. Sure, some use it for education, science, developing new and advancing current skills. The surge of Internet users created new industries, new jobs and new opportunities. In 10 years the number of billion-dollar-companies grew 30 times. That’s great. What’s not so great is the rise of suicides, the mental health crisis (yet to truly unfold) and the craze/obsession with “success” where the latter is associated solely by the money one makes. Strangely those trends seem to coincide with the advent of social media and smartphones. Just as the obsession with toxic positivity and political correctness (that some still perceive as synonym of politeness) Connected to/in death. Sounds depressing, right? Tradeoffs can be like that. But no worries, what isn’t depressing ? 🙂
The good thing is to never forget about the tradeoffs. Know and explore them before you make a choice. Don’t turn around, they won’t.