The incredible movement of money and goods and the repatterning of trade and sales are going on at a quicker and quicker pace. High streets are disappearing in their old form. We mourn their passing. Yet it is all about the incredible becoming commonplace.
Likewise, the exportation of wealth towards China and the East disrupts traditional world commerce, creating new tensions. All the result of back and forth trades and the making of stuff thousands of miles away from where they are bought and sold.
On holiday in Ireland last week I talked to a cousin who has a dairy farm. He keeps a constant eye on the movement of prices globally, as whether he gets a liveable price for his milk depends on world prices.
We are going through such instant and complete changes, changes which in the past would only have occurred so quickly through war. The First and Second World Wars created the modern world. Now the modern investment patterns, shareholders, billionaires and the vast ocean of consumers are made each day, new, again and again.
But you’d think that this had nothing to do with us. You’d think it was being done to us from on high. As if the little ingredients we as individual consumers brought to the table had no say in the matter. As if we’re always being told what to do.
We hold the power
But we are the power. We, the consumer, direct the vast wealth. Most consumers move like wildebeest seeking new grazing grounds. En masse, into and out of products, and into and out of suppliers and producers. We are always the deciding factor; creating the Amazons, Facebooks, Apples and Googles along the way.
