It's a small world after all

The Euro’s in crisis, most of the developed world is in hock up to its eyebrows and the super-rich are still super-rich. Bankers still, even when working for government-owned (i.e. bailed out) banks, get big bonuses and politicians are struggling to come up with any solutions because they’re in bed with big business as well as the electorate. And neither businesses nor politicians are particularly good at long-term planning. They think in terms of financial quarters and electoral terms. This is not sounding like a pleasant scenario for the world economy. Especially when you consider that the developing economies are heavily reliant on trade with the developed world for their own stability. We have outsourced our call centres, customer service centres, IT support to India and our electronics manufacture to the Far East. If we can’t afford to buy the products that use the services, then countries like Japan, China and India will see a slow-down, if not a full-blown obsession.

Our world has become so interconnected and so small that we can no longer insulate ourselves from geographically distant events: the UK is blind if it thinks the Euro zone crisis doesn’t affect it – at least 50% of UK trade is with the EU. I work in television, and as arty as that sounds, we’ve been hit by the shortages created by the tsunami (and subsequent nuclear meltdown) in Japan, which has wiped out suppliers of key technical components.

It would be nice to think that this interconnection of all our economies would promote at least a tolerance between our cultures and religions, but that’s wishful thinking. Because it requires an awareness of the wider world, and also the act of thinking. Which apparently isn’t as simple as it sounds.