Many years ago, I was at a seminar with a lady from a Famous Financial Publication, whose one topic of conversation was the need to leave everything to the private sector and the Market. These were the days when it was still just about possible to preserve a childlike faith of this kind. We were discussing security and resilience and she intervened to say, eyes shining with true belief, that “real security comes from being able to buy what you need in the market.”
Well, possibly, but in that case we don’t enjoy much security now. In those days, it’s true the process of rampant de-industrialisation hadn’t gone as far as it has now, jigsaw puzzles, hand soap and plastic spoons, for example, were still made in Europe, in some cases at least. And it must have seemed to national leaders that if you ever needed a few million surgical masks in a hurry, there would be a number to ring in China. I suppose it never occurred to them that one day we might need millions of surgical masks. Every day. In every country in the world. At the same time.
But whilst the shock and horror of elites on discovering that we had to ho begging to China for testing kits is all very grimly amusing, it’s only part of the story. Like a lot of other things, outsourcing production requires a nearly frictionless international system for it to work. And that, to put it mildly, cannot be guaranteed with Covid. Already deliveries of some products are starting to dry up. Electronics is the highest-profile example, but of course there are others: indeed, it’s the “others” that in the long run will be the most significant, as daily life’s interrupted for want of some gizmo produced in Bangladesh, shipped to Taiwan to be combined with another gizmo made in Vietnam to be wind up in a cheap supermarket somewhere in Portugal or Poland.
Perhaps real security comes from being able to produce what you need when you need it. There’s a thought.
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it 