Direct Action. What'd you think?

[jaguar]

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.