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Comment by jwie | Hacker News Reader

Globalism is an economic system so fragile marginal increases in shipping costs produce existential threats.

This is either an unserious article or the entire notion of global economics needs revisiting.

Technically if we would globalize the economy even more and develop more maritime routes the system would be more robust. It’s not obvious to me a system of localized economies would work better in the modern world.

I didn't read the article because of a paywall, while I tend to agree with your point, it misses some nuance. Globalism can be both fragile and resilient to breakage. So, for example, closing the Suez canal might result short-term increase in energy costs, along with all of the follow-on effects, but the global supply chain itself will "reroute around the damage" and take a less geographically optimal, slightly more expensive but still functional route.

Also, a "threat [to] the world economy" need not be existential. The threat of recession is also possible, and likely with a situation like this.

That said, I believe there ARE existential threats posed by globalism, particularly where inter-dependency is present for generations, such that either side of the relationship institutionally forgets how to maintain, repair or upgrade significant infrastructure. Arguably that is already the case for America with energy transmission equipment, semiconductor and PCB manufacturing, such that a war with China that began with a strike to those resources could not be recovered from.

IIRC Suez shipping cuts container costs by like 2%.

But real threat is energy shipping.

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