Apparently the USA is threatened with a major strike of dock workers at the major ports, just before the presidential election; where the ‘Arthur Scargill’ of the American dock workers has made an explicit no-automation demand. WHERE IS DARON ACEMOGLU OF POWER AND PROGRESS ? ;-)

I generally don’t listen to podcasts but I am occasionally tempted to engage in hate-listening. One recent example is an Odd Lots episode with Vivek Chibber, whose book, Locked in Place, I despise. But I could be doing something else more productive than hate-listening for 50 minutes

I have high hopes for this book. Most books on the subject have disappointing and unsatisfying in various ways.

of course she is referred to as the china poblana because anyone from any part of Asia becomes chino in Latin America ;-)

did you get to the part about the Mughal princess who becomes first a Portuguese slave but ends up as a Mexican saint? (I may have some of the details I read the book so long ago)

Imagine mapping this evolution from 1500 to today, in some kind of comprehensible fashion. The mind groans at the task ;-)

Then with the IR, supply chains globalise even further as raw materials from around the world, including North & South America, and Asia and Africa, arrive in Britain; and Britain exports both finished goods AND coal (people always forget, Britain was the big energy exporter of the 19th century)

Now imagine tracing the evolution of this system from, say, 1500, when most (but certainly not all) output was still produced from inputs which were national or even very local. Then more and more goods get globalised in their supply chains in the century before the Industrial Revolution.

Again, this complex network should really be just called "The Economy". But this (wonderfully) tangled network evolved from something which used to be much simpler. Friedman famously waxed lyrical about the pencil supply chain at mid-century, which was complex but nothing like what see today

Amazing thread! Final producers & their vast number of suppliers are entangled with one another in ways which may be incomprehensible even to them. Thread is meant to analyse the vulnerability to small shocks, of this supply network. But really, it's just an amazing map of The Economy, period.