1. This morning I got up from a bed made from Swedish Timber
2. I ate a selection of produce from local farms but Kenyan coffee and Californian Orange Juice
3. I dressed in Indian cotton and Australian wool with shoes made of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber.
4. I read a book using paper made from Finnish pulp and Chinese ink
5. I switched on my computer manufactured from components sourced from Korea, America, Taiwan and China
6. At lunch I will eat bread made from French and Russian wheat with New Zealand Butter.
7. I will write my paper journal using a French fountain pen.
8. I will check investments from each continent on the planet except Antartica…
9. But my computer screen saver has pictures from there…
10. The headache tablet I took was researched, tested, produced, patented, packed, delivered and distributed in seven different countries.
This is the truth behind the myth that Globalisation is bad. Human beings have been interdependent since the Stone Age and it has always meant that one add one made more than two - Global Growth!
Poverty is fetching your water from a river not a tap, getting firewood from a forest not a shed, cleaning potatoes growing outside rather than buying them from a shop, catching a chicken to pluck, gut and cook - all before fixing the roof, changing the floor covering, whittling a needle to fix your clothes, making a pot to cook with…need I go on?
Wealth is how much you can exchange your time for. It is the ability to do just one thing and yet exchange it and gain from thousands of people who have done other things for your benefit.
Louis XIV, The Sun King, had 498 servants attending to his daily welfare. My guess is we have more.
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