Quote:
|
I assert that very little would happen to first world lifestyles. Markets for commodities would be distorted. Some ores (e.g. tantalum) would become hard to get out of the ground for a while. Spices, coffee - the things sixteenth-century navigation set out to get - would be more or less gone. Clothing - aye, there's the rub. Clothing would be expensive. But as far as the first world's standards of hygiene, life expectancy, production, power consumption and money wasted on corporate amusement are concerned I bet little would change.
|
You don't seem to realsie jsut how much is made third world...If you went round your house and itiimsed every item and where it was made you'd get a pretty damn long list. Probably a serious proportion of clothes, appliances or part of them more often), shoes, building materials, parts of your car often, parts of *so many* things its not funny. If they all had to be manufactured in the first world the cost would be anything from 2x to 20x, the impact on price - huge resulting in many not being able to afford things they previously took for granted. Forget primary resources - i'm speaking purely in labour terms - and the fact is we exploit cheaper overseas labour to lower costs - therefore without that cheper labour first world costs in a very large spectrum of good world be markedly higher.