{"id":39749,"date":"2018-10-27T06:48:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T11:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39749"},"modified":"2018-10-27T06:48:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T11:48:08","slug":"globalization-has-hollowed-out-rural-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39749","title":{"rendered":"Globalization Has Hollowed Out Rural America"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2018\/10\/globalization-has-hollowed-out-rural.html\">Globalization Has Hollowed Out Rural America<\/a><\/h3>\n<div id=\"post-7801542373937792959\" class=\"post-body\">\n<div><i>The value of\u00a0local control\u00a0and\u00a0local capital\u00a0far exceed the pathetic &#8220;savings&#8221; reaped from shoddy commoditized goods.<\/i><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>What do we make of an economy in which a handful of bubblicious urban areas are magnets for jobs and capital while rural communities have been hollowed out?<\/b>\u00a0The short answer is that this progression of urbanization has been one of the core dynamics of civilization for thousands of years: opportunities are greater in cities, and so people move from rural areas with few opportunities to cities with greater opportunities.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>But that&#8217;s not the only dynamic hollowing out America&#8217;s rural communities: globalization plays a key role, too.<\/b>\u00a0Rural economies can rarely muster\u00a0<i>economies of scale<\/i>\u00a0that enable globally competitive enterprises. Rural communities generally lack the capital, expertise, global supply chains and cheap transportation costs that are the building blocks of successful global production and distribution.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>In a global economy characterized by over-capacity, over-production and mobile capital, localized rural economies can&#8217;t compete<\/b>\u00a0with the low cost of commoditized products distributed by finely tuned global supply chains and cheap transportation.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Pre-globalization and cheap transport, local bakeries imported bulk flour and baked bread that was lower in cost than loaves shipped in from afar. The local bakeries held the competitive price advantage, and so local bakeries could pay local labor and local taxes that then supported the rest of the local economy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But in today&#8217;s economy, commoditized bread can be delivered rural communities at prices local bakeries cannot match.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>The same holds true for virtually all globally tradable goods&#8211; foods, clothing, etc.<\/b>\u00a0The only economic sectors with a toehold in rural communities are corporate farms, the occasional small specialty corporate factory making non-commoditized components and non-tradable services such as hair salons, motels, thrift shops, cafes, etc.<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Globalization Has Hollowed Out Rural America The value of\u00a0local control\u00a0and\u00a0local capital\u00a0far exceed the pathetic &#8220;savings&#8221; reaped from shoddy commoditized goods. What do we make of an economy in which a handful of bubblicious urban areas are magnets for jobs and capital while rural communities have been hollowed out?\u00a0The short answer is that this progression of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127,3761,370,587,805,833],"class_list":["post-39749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-global-trade","tag-globalization","tag-of-two-minds","tag-trade","tag-urbanization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39750,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39749\/revisions\/39750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}