A Big Mess Coming

The rising inflation seems to have caught everyone off guard. The US inflation rate of 8.3% in April, while representing a slowdown compared to previous months, is still far too high for comfort. The situation is not much better in the Eurozone, where inflation has risen to 8.1%. Prices are rising all over the world, and no one knows how to stop them. In all likelihood, the chain reaction of price hikes will drive prices up in several rounds, and shortages of gas, wheat, oil, semiconductors and other products will only make the situation worse. Indeed, a big mess is coming.

But hunger is only the beginning. Hungry people will stop at nothing. When entire nations go hungry, wars break out and conflicts turn violent. The cataclysm that has just begun to develop could be worse than our worst nightmares, something we cannot even imagine. Besides manmade disasters, we can also expect natural disasters such as floods and fires to wreak havoc around the world.

The problem is that some of the products whose supply has been hampered, such as semiconductors, wheat, and gas, are the basis of the world’s industry and food production. We need wheat for most everything we eat, and we need gas and computer chips for most everything we produce. Therefore, their absence hampers that entire global economy and food production.

The first to suffer will be Africa, and possibly much of East Asia. Billions of people will go hungry, billions!

But hunger is only the beginning. Hungry people will stop at nothing. When entire nations go hungry, wars break out and conflicts turn violent. The cataclysm that has just begun to develop could be worse than our worst nightmares, something we cannot even imagine. Besides manmade disasters, we can also expect natural disasters such as floods and fires to wreak havoc around the world.

One thing that people might do is begin to stock up on staple foods. However, I do not think it will help much since we are in for a prolonged crisis, not something that will be over in weeks.

If anything can help at all, it is the realization that we are all in the same boat. Currently, the boat is riddled with holes and sinking fast. We can make those holes disappear if we join hands and work together at all levels, from the most personal to the international.

However, collaboration requires acknowledgement of our interdependence and, above all, trust. Without these two, we will continue to try to help only ourselves, and in consequence, we will all sink.

Moreover, if we begin to collaborate and think about the common good rather than only our own, we will find that there is really no lack of anything. Before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, we were already throwing away at least a third of the food we produced. In other words, there is plenty of food but no willingness to share, and that is the real reason for the hunger, and for all the other problems we are experiencing.

This crisis will teach us that we can succeed only if we work together for the common good. However, for every lesson there is a fee. The sooner we learn the lesson, the lower will be the fee. The longer we stall, the higher the fee will be and the more painful the lesson.

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America’s Baby Formula Crisis: Food for Thought?

America faces an unprecedented food shortage in its most tender spot, babies. The infant formula shortage in the U.S. has activated a Cold War era law to prioritize and speed up its production. In addition to it, U.S. Air Force flights have transported tons of imports of baby food from Europe in what is called "Operation Fly Formula." It could have been a beautiful story if it were not so tragic and real. It touches a sensitive nerve so we can rebuild society as a human safety net for everyone in the world.

The baby food crisis in the U.S. shows us that no country, big or small, rich or poor, is immune to food insecurity. No one can guarantee stability for the provision of the most basic needs for everyone, including to sustain children’s lives. This is the unstable and vulnerable reality we live in today; more and more people and countries will be affected and will demonstrate how shaky the world is, as if teetering on one foot.?

Week after week, parents and caregivers in America have traveled across states looking for baby formula only to find scarce supplies or empty shelves. The ongoing shortage of powdered baby formula in the U.S. has been caused by pandemic-related disruptions in the global supply chain and by the shutdown of the largest production plant of Abbott Nutrition, the main supplier to the US market, due to contamination concerns.

How could such a crisis hit strong America? After all, it is not a developing country.?It is a superpower that should be immune to such a crisis of an essential good. But this will not be an isolated incident. We will soon see many similar phenomena as a result of multiple variables affecting today’s world. ?

The baby food crisis in the U.S. shows us that no country, big or small, rich or poor, is immune to food insecurity. No one can guarantee stability for the provision of the most basic needs for everyone, including to sustain children’s lives. This is the unstable and vulnerable reality we live in today; more and more people and countries will be affected and will demonstrate how shaky the world is, as if teetering on one foot.?

We need to open our eyes and see that human society was not built as a system of mutual security with food and children as our primary concern. We failed to plan for the bad times during the good times. If we do not admit it, then our supply problems will only deepen. ?

Our battered planet is able to give us everything, but we do not give it a chance to provide us with what is necessary, including food for the soul needed due to our broken human relationships. We spoil everything we touch due to our growing egoism that prevents us from being considerate of others. ?

The purpose of this crisis is to shake us up and make us grow to understand that we have no choice, that in the scale of priorities, before money, respect and education, we must make sure that every person in the world gets proper nutrition. ?

So, besides baby formula, in terms of food security in general, we can choose fertile areas like in Siberia or South America and turn them into global grain fields that provide everything for everyone. The only condition is that there is a real desire to feed and benefit everyone without transforming it into someone’s personal business for individualistic profit at the expense of others suffering. ?

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) teaches us, "If there is no flour, there is no Torah." Indeed, food should be the basis of our human concern. If we are not able to provide bread for everyone, we will not be able to grow and elevate the human species to a level higher than the corporeal one, to the level of mutual care and balance. In such a state we will lack nothing and we will be able to guarantee a good future for our children and for all of society.

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Globalization Needs Urgent Fixing

In an interview for CBS News on March 8, 2009, during the financial crisis that became known as the Great Recession, then Wachovia Corp. economist Mark Vitner said that untying the world's entangled economies is “like trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. It just can't be done that easily. I don't know if it can be done at all.” Since then, we have grown even more entangled. Nevertheless, the developing food crisis because of the Russia-Ukraine war, the semiconductor crisis and shipment delays because of the pandemic, and the increasing international tensions have brought back the question of deglobalization.

If we dedicate efforts to teaching ourselves about our interdependence and the necessity to collaborate positively, we can reverse the negative trajectory and the threat of war. Instead, we will advance with globalization peacefully, in a way that benefits everyone, and truly provides for all our needs.

At the 2022 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that ended just last week, deglobalization was again a major topic. The Financial Times reported in one story that “The three-decade era of globalisation risks going into reverse according to company executives and investors,” and in another story, argued that “Technological progress suggests the turn from globalisation can bring benefits as well as challenges.”

I agree with Vitner’s observation that it is impossible to deglobalize the world economy. It cannot be done, not now, not ever, and in the future, it will be even more scrambled than today.

However, and this is why economists are toying with the idea of breaking the ties between the world’s economies, globalization is aggravating the world’s problems because it is based on such negative relationships that we should stop its progress and not continue until we organize it on a more positive basis for everyone involved.

Currently, we are relating to our economic relations the same as we are relating to all of our relationships: from an exploitative approach. Without realizing that the economy provides for our most basic needs, and should therefore not be treated as a means for abusing and trampling other people, the world economy will continue to slow down and food and gas shortages will escalate.

The paralysis will lead to famine in many countries and severe shortage of staples in many others. As a result, conflicts will become violent, wars will break out, and life will devolve to 19th century conditions. We cannot afford to mistreat each other when it comes to economic matters.

What is even more frustrating is that the shortages are not real; they are the outcomes of nations’ unwillingness to supply other countries with necessary products. If we change our attitude toward each other, we will discover that we already have an abundance of everything and there will be no shortages of any kind.

Thanks to globalization, small countries such as Singapore, Israel, some of the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, European countries with small populations, and small islands can all prosper despite their size. They import what they need, which is most everything, and export unique products or technologies, or rely on tourism. However, in the absence of extensive and constructive ties between countries and nations, such countries will not be able to provide for themselves, and they will simply disappear.

Notwithstanding, we will not be able to stop being dependent on each other. We may think we can, and this is why deglobalization was a topic of discussion at the WEF, but we will not be able to do so. One way or the other, we will have to improve our relationships and stop trying to belittle and put each other down. We will discover that even trying to do so, as is happening now, causes tremendous harm to everyone, including to ourselves.

There is no way to go through the shift without some level of pain. Pain is the only impetus for change. However, I hope that we will be clever enough to respond to it quickly so that the level of pain we must endure will not entail a third, nuclear world war.

The natural evolution of humanity has connected us, and nature does not reverse its track. Therefore, all we can do is try to move forward pleasantly and not painfully.

If we dedicate efforts to teaching ourselves about our interdependence and the necessity to collaborate positively, we can reverse the negative trajectory and the threat of war. Instead, we will advance with globalization peacefully, in a way that benefits everyone, and truly provides for all our needs.