O fim da globalização (parte VIII)

Parte VII

Continuo a minha leitura de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.

O autor acredita que com o fim da Ordem Americana imposta desde o pós-guerra o mundo aberto em que vivemos vai desaparecer. Uma das hipóteses do autor é a generalização da pirataria que se vê na costa da Somália, e o regresso de corsários ao serviço de estados. Primeiro o autor descreve os circuitos do petróleo e do gás natural, depois ilustra como as energias renováveis nunca conseguirão substituir nas décadas mais próximas as energias fósseis. É impressionante, os políticos mandam bitaites e fazem grandes proclamações. O autor limita-se a fazer contas e a demonstrar que não existe nem lítio nem cobalto capaz de alimentar essas ilusões. Agora estou a assistir a uma descrição das fontes, e de quem processa o aço, o cobre, o alumínio, o lítio, o molibdénio, o cobalto, a platina, o ouro, a prata, terras raras, e ...

O autor bate sempre na tecla que muitos países vão sentir-se tentados a novamente voltarem à tentação imperial para conseguir garantir o fornecimento desses materiais.

Na minha mente surgiu entretanto uma palavra da segunda guerra mundial: ersatz.

Muita investigação vai ter de ser desenvolvida na Europa para arranjar alternativas a todos aqueles materiais que a economia actual precisa, mas não existem na Europa. Imagino moléculas orgânicas a substituírem os materiais originais.

"Define the problems the organization should focus on"

"What I found is that to make the transition successfully, executives must navigate a tricky set of changes in a their leadership focus and skills, which I call the seven seismic shifts. They must learn to move from specialist to generalist, analyst to integrator, tactician to strategist, bricklayer to architect, problem solver to agenda setter, warrior to diplomat, and supporting cast member to lead role.

...

Problem Solver to Agenda Setter

Define the problems the organization should focus on, and spot issues that don't fall neatly into any one function but are still important."

A propósito de "Define the problems the organization should focus on", quantas vezes esta definição é feita de forma reactiva? Quantas vezes é feita sem a transição de tacticista para estratégico?

Trechos retirados de "How Managers Become Leaders"  

Coisas que vão afectar a nossa vida económica

Coisas que vão afectar a nossa vida económica:

• Autoeuropa a caminho do segundo melhor ano de sempre com alívio nos chips
• Vendas europeias de carros em junho em mínimos de 1996
• Why Are People Across China Refusing to Pay Their Mortgages? What to Know So Far
• The War Economy

"But in any case, despite my wishes, the world is probably entering an era of intense geopolitical competition, the likes of which haven’t been seen at least since the 1970s and probably since the 1930s. And that competition has the potential to provide a legitimating mission for the reintroduction of the kind of large-scale economic planning that many people have been looking for since 2008. We may not be able to prevent the new era of conflict, but in some ways we can take advantage of it — and in any case, we must do what needs to be done."

Recordar a série O risco de voltar a trabalhar com a China (parte IV)

Exportações nos primeiros 5 meses do ano

Exportações portuguesas nos primeiros cinco meses do ano. Comparação entre 2022 com 2019 e 2021:

Comparando com o mês anterior:

Desempenho impressionante dos produtos farmacêuticos, mas praticamente todos os sectores que acompanho há anos com números muito bons. 

O fim da globalização e a solução tuga para a segurança social (parte VII)

Parte VI e outras. 

“Yes, the Americans have probably expanded their money supply more than is entirely reasonable, but try to maintain some perspective”

O autor começa um capítulo designado por “Disaster Is Relative” com o aviso acima. Há dias li algures que mais de 40% dos dólares americanos em circulação tinham sido emitidos desde 2020. Isto corporiza a ideia que tenho dos americanos.

O que eu não tinha noção era dos outros valores:

“In under two years, the European banking crisis expansion increased the euro money supply by 80 percent”

Como não seria de esperar outra coisa com um banco central mais político do que outra coisa. Daí:

“The Europeans and Japanese regularly expand their money supply whenever they have a political goal to meet, a decision-making process that encourages most people who are not European and Japanese from holding or transacting in their currencies at all. As such, their money supplies have often surpassed that of the United States, despite the fact that both the European euro and especially the Japanese yen are no longer true global currencies.”

E a China:

“Since 2007—the year everyone started talking about the Chinese taking over the planet—the supply of yuan has increased by more than eight hundred percent.”

Realmente … disaster is relative.

“So, have the Americans played a bit fast and loose with their monetary policy? Perhaps. Will that have consequences down the line? Probably. Will those consequences be comfortable? Probably not. But it is the Europeans and Japanese who have gone off the deep end, while the Chinese have swum out to sea during a hurricane and dived headfirst into the Texas-sized whirlpool that serves as Godzilla's front door. Scale matters.

Particularly when the rules change.”

Depois do autor chamar a atenção para o impacte futuro das brincadeira com as fiat currencies, resolve meter a cereja no topo do bolo: O que vai acontecer aos mercados financeiros quando uma massa brutal de gente que teve os seus melhores anos de rendimento do trabalho entre 1990 e 2020 se começar a reformar e a mudar padrões de comportamento de consumo e a assumir padrões de investimento muito mais conservadores. Sem haver backup de uma nova geração capaz de substituir a anterior.

"When the money stops flowing and financing costs increase, the whole thing comes crashing down.

Second, it is so coming crashing down. There’s no geopolitical forecast here. It is basic math. The majority of the men and women in the world’s mature worker bulge—those all-important Baby Boomers—will hit retirement in the first half of the 2020s. Retirees no longer have new income to invest.”

Depois, certamente por desconhecimento do que o ministro Vieira da Silva fez em Portugal para salvar a segurança social, o autor continua:

"Or at least it's great until those mature workers retire. Instead of paying into the system, retirees draw from the system in the form of pensions and health care costs. Replace a tax-heavy, mature worker-heavy demographic of the 2000s and 2010s with the tax-poor, retiree-heavy demographic of the 2020s and 2030s and the governing models of the post-World War II era do not simply go broke, they become societal suicide pacts."

Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.

O fim da globalização e a finança (parte VI)

Parte V, IV, III, II e I.

A fazer fé no que o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, escreve, aprendi umas coisas interessantes no capítulo sobre a finança.

Começa por contar como o Japão, desde o século VII:

"the Japanese had a unique view of debt. In Japan capital exists not to serve economic needs, but instead to serve political needs. To that end, debt was allowed, even encouraged . . . so long as it didn’t become inconvenient to the sovereign. Dating back to the seventh century, if widespread debt got in the way of the emperor or sho-gun’s goals, it was simply dissolved under the debt forgiveness doctrine of tokusei."

Depois, começa a desfiar como os vários países asiáticos usam e abusam das fiat currencies:

"as the most enthusiastic of the fiat currency adopters, the Asians were willing to push the limits of what was possible to the point that Americans and Europeans got a bit skittish about the very nature of Asian finance."

Depois, apresenta o exemplo da China:

"The biggest of the adherents to the Asian financial model is, of course, China. It isn’t so much that the Chinese applied the model in any fundamentally new ways, but instead that they carried the model to its absurd extremes by nearly every measure.

...

By the time the Chinese were ready to get down to the business of business, the gold standard was nearly a decade gone. Modern Communist China has known nothing but the era of fiat currencies and cheap money. It had no good habits to break.

...

The Chinese have embraced the fiat currency era just as warmly as they embraced the Asian financial model. China regularly prints currency at more than double the rate of the United States, sometimes at five times the U.S. rate. And whereas the U.S. dollar is the store of value for the world and the global medium of exchange, the Chinese yuan wasn’t even used in Hong Kong until the 2010s.*

Part and parcel of the Chinese financial model is that there is no top. Because the system throws a bottomless supply of money at issues, it is hongry. Nothing—and I mean nothing—is allowed to stand in the way of development. Price is no issue because the volume of credit is no issue."

Depois, vêm palavras nada meigas sobre o euro:

"The Europeans are far more reserved than the Asians when it comes to finance, but that’s a bit like saying Joan Rivers didn’t like plastic surgery as much as Cher.

The profit motive is alive and well in Europe, with everything from home ownership to industrial expansion constrained by capital availability. Yet Europeans demand higher levels of service, stability, and support from their governments, and most European governments secure that service, stability, and support by tinkering with financial systems, most notably via banks."

Depois de explicar como diferentes países europeus olham para o dinheiro de forma diferente começa a massacrar:

"An obvious characteristic that comes from this is that no two economies are the same. Credit at the national level is also colored by a combination of size and diversity.

...

Somewhere along the line, the Europeans misplaced this basic understanding. They conflated the idea that having a unified currency would deepen economic regional integration as well as push Europe along toward the goal of becoming globally powerful.

For reasons that only made sense at the time, in the 1990s and early 2000s it became Europe’s conventional wisdom that everyone in Europe should be able to borrow at terms that previously had only been offered to the most scrupulous of Europeans. Furthermore, such borrowing should be green-lighted in any volume for any project by any government or corporation at any level.

...

The entire European system is now doing little more than going through the motions until the common currency inevitably shatters.

Before you get all judgy about the Asians or Europeans, please understand that they are hardly the only ones taking advantage of the cash-for-everyone world we currently live in. The Americans are no exception."

Não tenho grande opinião sobre os políticos europeus actuais, mas a fazer fé no livro é muito pior, e não só na Europa, é em todo o mundo. 

Planeamento versus pensamento estratégico

Uma boa reflexão de Roger Martin, mais uma. 

"We have things we control, which are called the independent variables. Because we control them, we can conduct experiments in which we vary the independent variables in an attempt to produce desired results on the dependent variable — the variable we don’t control.

...

Customers are the ultimate dependent variable. We don’t control them at all. They make their own decisions. We control all sorts of company assets — people, capital, physical assets, technologies, brands, patents, etc. They are the independent variables. We can utilize them to invest in initiatives of all sorts with the intention of influencing the dependent variable — customer behavior — in the way we want.

I believe that planners do not understand the difference between dependent and independent variables. As a consequence, they don’t think about how their initiatives in combination will compel customers to do the things they wish. Planners are not lacking intelligence. Their initiatives tend to be sensible — or laudable as I have described them. Planners work hard and spend the corporation’s resources at their disposal in an attempt to produce the outcomes they desire. But since they lack an understanding of how independent and dependent variables work, they assume that if they put together enough laudable initiatives, things will work out the way they hope.

...

Strategists, on the other hand, fully understand and appreciate that customers are the ultimate dependent variable. They know that only an artfully integrated set of choices has the chance of compelling customers to act in a fashion that is consistent with the strategist’s aspirations."

Trechos retirados de "How to Compel Customer Action"

O fim da globalização (parte V)

O fim da globalização (parte IV) + Parte I, parte II  e parte III.

O autor prevê o colapso do comércio intercontinental por causa da ascenção da pirataria. Uma perspectiva interessante que nos obriga a pensar no que tomamos como garantido:

"Long-haul transport is what brings everything from areas of high supply to high demand, regardless of participant. For any product that is concentrated in terms of supply or demand, expect market collapse.

...

The Western Hemisphere is fine for foodstuffs and energy but will need to build out its manufacturing capacity for products as wildly varied as laptops and shoes. The German bloc’s manufacturing capacity is largely in-house, but the raw inputs that enable it to operate are wholly absent. The Japanese and Chinese are going to have to head out to secure food and energy and raw materials and markets. It’s a good thing that Japan likes to manufacture products where it sells them, and fields a potent long-reach navy. It’s a bad thing that most of China’s navy can’t make it past Vietnam, even in an era of peace

...

First and most obvious are the pirates. Any zone without a reasonably potent local naval force is one that is all but certain to host Somalia-style pirate harassment. Second and less obvious are the privateers, in essence pirates sponsored by an actual country to harass their competitors, and who have been granted rights to seek succor, fuel, and crew (and sell their *ahem* booty) in allied ports.

...

The third security concern isn’t likely to be constrained to the no-man’s-lands: state piracy. We’re moving into a world where the ability to import anything—whether it be iron ore or diesel fuel or fertilizer or wire or mufflers—will be sharply circumscribed.

...

Everything we’ve come to expect about transport since 1946 dies in this world. Bigger, slower, more specialized vessels are little more than tasty floating buffets for whatever privateer or pirate (state or otherwise) happens to be in the area. Larger vessels might maximize efficiency in a unified, low-threat world, but in a fractured, high-threat environment they also concentrate risk.

...

That’s a massive problem for German manufacturing, as many of its suppliers are from beyond the horizon and roughly half of its customers aren’t even in Europe."

Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan. 

Curiosidade do dia

 Não percebo a comoção:

O Guardian pública hoje uma extensíssima investigação sobre o modo como a Uber se impôs no mundo, em particular na Europa, quebrando leis, aliciando políticos e promovendo violência. Macron não sai nada bem do filme revelado por mais de 120 mil e-mails a que o jornal teve acesso. pic.twitter.com/RCokYczW3c

— Carlos Vaz Marques (@cvazmarques) July 11, 2022

Recordo daqui:

"É claro que muitos olham para hoje e vêem as Uber e as AirBnB e adivinham um futuro dominado por essas mega-plataformas. Prefiro considerá-las como entidades transitórias, úteis para dinamitar as grilhetas criadas pelos governos para proteger os incumbentes do Normalistão. Depois? Depois, virão as plataformas de 2ª geração ou cooperativas, porque existe estratégia em todo o lado, às vezes é só uma questão de tempo." 

O fim da globalização (parte IV)

Recently leaked China's population data confirm my estimates: births began to decline in 1991, with no peak in 2004 or 2011; Population is now less than 1.28 billion, not the official 1.41 billion; Population began to shrink in 2018, not 2031 as officially predicted. pic.twitter.com/xCge7cTRFS

— 易富贤YI Fuxian《大国空巢》 (@fuxianyi) July 9, 2022

Parte I, parte II  e parte III.

"The average grocery store today has about forty thousand individual items, up from about two hundred at the dawn of the twentieth century.

...

Take this concept of utter availability, apply it to absolutely everything, and you now have a glimmer of the absolute connectivity that underpins the modern, globalized economy. The ingredients of today’s industrial and consumer goods are only available because they can be moved from—literally—halfway around the world at low costs and high speeds and in perfect security. Phones, fertilizers, oil, cherries, propylene, single-malt whiskey . . . you name it, it is in motion. All. The. Time. Transportation is the ultimate enabler.

...

The East India Company traded about 50 tons of tea a year at the start of the nineteenth century and 15,000 toward the end of it. Today that same 15,000 tons is loaded or unloaded somewhere in the world every forty-five seconds or so.

...

In the age of globalization, everyone could get in on global access, manufacturing, and mass consumption. No longer was value-added work sequestered to the Imperial Centers. Manufacturing elsewhere required fuel and raw materials. Expanding industrial bases and infrastructure elsewhere required the same. Expanding middle classes elsewhere demanded even more.

...

In a world "safe" for all, the world's "successful" geographies could no longer lord over and/or exploit the rest. A somewhat unintended side effect of this was to demote geography from its fairly deterministic role in gauging the success or failure of a country, to something that became little more than background noise. Those geographies once left behind could now bloom in safety.

...

The ability to diversify supply systems over any distance means it is economically advantageous to break up manufacturing into dozens, even thousands of individual steps. Workers building this or that tiny piece of widget become very good at it, but they are clueless as to the rest of the process. The workforce that purifies silicon dioxide does not and cannot create silicon wafers, does not and cannot build motherboards, and does not and cannot code.

This combination of reach and specialization takes us to a very clear, and foreboding, conclusion: no longer do the goods consumed in a place by a people reflect the goods produced in a place by a people. The geographies of consumption and production are unmoored."

Segundo o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, a globalização está a descarrilar pelo descalabro demográfico nos países produtores e consumidores, e pelo fim da Ordem Americana. Há muito que escrevo sobre a desglobalização, mas por causa de Mongo. A demografia é uma variável que raramente é considerada como refiro na parte III. 

Alguns flashes sobre o futuro

Alguns flashes sobre o futuro:

• The rental washing machine arrives: Haier revolutionizes laundry

Pay-per-wash com manutenção e consumíveis incluídos. 

• Grupo de Braga constrói hotel em Guimarães, com seis pisos, em 10 meses

Isto para mim é voltar a 2004-2008 e a um projecto industrial nesta vertente. (Uma harmonia de propostas de valor recíprocas). Destruído por um suicidio na Alemanha na sequência do VW short squeeze.

Por que é então uma das [regiões] mais pobres de toda a UE?

Ouvi o elogio de JMF ao Norte a partir da perspectiva que concordo. Deixo no entanto aqui o desafio: sendo uma região tão bem sucedida em termos económicos, porque é então uma das mais pobres de toda a UE?

— pvsalvador (@pvsalvador1) July 6, 2022

Uma excelente pergunta.

Julgo que a razão está ilustrada nesta figura:

Figura usada em:

• Mea culpa (parte II) - Novembro de 2021
• Competitividade sem competitividade? Mas o que é ser competitivo? - Junho de 2022

Muitas empresas da região Norte conseguem ser competitivas, mas não são produtivas (aqui no sentido de produtividade que gera margens superiores). Conseguem ser competitivas porque os clientes não compram simplesmento de acordo com o preço mais baixo, também valorizam a rapidez, a flexibilidade e algum design. No entanto, como estão em sectores tradicionais, os preços conseguidos nunca conseguem libertar margens superiores porque o preço unitário nunca pode atingir um valor que os consumidores não são capazes de suportar em loja. O que José Manuel Fernandes e muitos economistas defendem é que estas empresas precisam de crescer para serem mais produtivas, só que isso não é possível. Empresas maiores nestes sectores tradicionais já não competem com base na flexibilidade e rapidez, mas no preço custo puro e simples. Isso requer outro tipo de organização interna, outro tipo de hardware da produção, outro tipo de actividade comercial para outro tipo de clientes.

Por mais que se pressione estas empresas tradicionais a aumentarem a sua produtividade, os ganhos possíveis serão sempre baixos e não permitirão colmatar o gap com a média europeia. Porque os ganhos necessários dependem do crescimento do numerador na equação da produtividade (recordar o Evangelho do Valor).

Quer dizer que estamos condenados a estes níveis de produtividade? Não, mas para mudarmos de paradigma temos de ter outros agentes económicos, temos de, sem atacar as empresas existentes, criar as condições para que outras apareçam para que esta evolução ocorra:

Recordar, por exemplo este postal - The "flying geese" model, ou deixem as empresas morrer!!! de Novembro de 2021.

Reparar que o Japão não ficou mais rico porque porque criou empresas têxteis maiores, ficou mais rico porque fizeram o mesmo que os franceses e alemães nos anos 70, as empresas têxteis incapazes de competir com os salários praticados por outros sectores emergentes migraram para outros países. Não digo que se matem empresas, digo simplesmente: deixem as empresas morrer, ponto!!!

Como é que podemos promover esta transformação? Portugal não tem capital, nem know-how, ... devíamos aprender a lição irlandesa - Tamanho, produtividade e a receita irlandesa.

Qual o grande risco que Portugal pode correr? Fazer tudo para manter artificialmente as empresas de um sector, por exemplo "industrializando" a importação massiça de trabalhadores asiáticos.

Recordar:

• Mais bofetadas e a turbulência em curso - Novembro de 2019
• Bofetadas e locus de controlo - produtividade é que não. - Novembro de 2019 (Estávamos no mundo pré-covid, com o turismo a bombar ... recuem a esse tempo. O que tínhamos? "Sector a bombar como nunca esteve, sector com falta de pessoal para trabalhar e pede que os contribuintes os apoiem com dinheiro para manter a empregabilidade!!!"
• Uma bofetada que recebo como um aviso - Agosto de 2019 

A escolha com os pés

 

"With the world’s consumption-led economies taking responsibility for more and more of their own production and becoming more and more insular, there simply won’t be many economic opportunities for working-age adults living in export-led systems, much less postgrowth systems. Even if such weakening countries survive, their workers will have a choice between steadily higher tax rates to support their aging populations, or leaving. Expect a lot of the world’s remaining labor—especially its high-skilled labor—to soon be knocking on America’s door."

Relacionar com o que por cá já acontece, "FMI quer mexidas no sistema de pensões e Governo concorda".

O problema não é o irs, o problema sãos os trinta e tal % que o ponzi da segurança social come

— Carlos P da Cruz 🇺🇦 (@ccz1) October 22, 2021

Trecho retirado de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.

Imagem retirada de "Ide, ide"

 

O fim da globalização (parte III)

Parte I e parte II. 

Na parte II ilustro como o autor aborda o tema do colapso demográfico. Nesta parte III sublinho os trechos que se seguem:

"More products. More players. Bigger markets. More markets. Easier transport. More interconnectivity. More trade. More capital. More technology. More integration. More financial penetration. More and bigger and bigger and more. A world of more.

Ever since Columbus sailed the ocean blue, human economics have been defined by this concept of more. The world's evolution within the idea of more, this reasonable expectation of more, is ultimately what destroyed the old economies of the pre-deepwater imperial and feudal systems. 

...

Geopolitics tells us the post–World War II and especially the post–Cold War economic booms were artificial and transitory. Going back to something more “normal” by definition requires . . . shrinkage. Demographics tells us that the number and collective volume of mass-consumption-driven economies has already peaked. In 2019 the Earth for the first time in history had more people aged sixty-five and over than five and under. By 2030 there will be twice as many retirees, in relative terms.

...

Combine geopolitics and demographics and we know there will be no new mass consumption systems. Even worse, the pie that is the global economy isn't going to simply shrink; it is being fractured into some very nonintegrated pieces, courtesy of American inaction.

...

We aren't simply looking at a demographically induced economic breakdown; we are looking at the end of a half millennium of economic history.

...

First, everything is going to change. Whatever new economic system or systems the world develops will be something we're unlikely to recognize as being viable today. We will probably need far higher volumes of capital (retirees absorb it like sponges), but we'll have far less of it (fewer workers means fewer taxpayers). That suggests economic growth and technological progress (both of which require capital as an input) will stall out.

...

Second, the process will be the very definition of traumatic. The concept of more has been our guiding light as a species for centuries. From a certain point of view, the past seventy years of globalization have simply been "more" on steroids, a sharp uptake on our long-cherished economic understandings. Between the demographic inversion and the end of globalization, we are not simply ending our long experience with more, or even beginning a terrifying new world of less; we face economic free fall as everything that has underpinned humanity's economic existence since the Renaissance unwinds all at once."

Já repararam que no discurso ambiental este tema não é referido? No cenário central, até 2080 Portugal perde 2 milhões de habitantes. Ao mesmo tempo que o número de idosos crescerá mais um milhão de pessoas e a população em idade ativa (15 a 64 anos) diminuirá de 6,6 para 4,2 milhões de pessoas. O tipo e quantidade de consumo vai cair.

O autor, americano, julgo que vítima da doença anglo-saxónica foca-se muito na produção em massa. Teremos menos produção em massa e mais Mongo. Por isso, este capítulo designado "The end of more". Teremos menos globalização e mais blocos económicos.

Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan. 

Curiosidade do dia

No mesmo dia em que leio "Costa diz a empresários alemães que Portugal é de confiança com estabilidade política e contas certas", leio também:

We are proud of our 🇪🇪 tax system. Simple, transparent and with few exemptions. https://t.co/EetSMXWbAZ

— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) July 6, 2022

Sim, 35º em 37 países (corporate tax rank)

 

O fim da globalização (parte II)

Part I.

O autor faz uma descrição do rápido envelhecimento das sociedades industrializadas. Aponta para um tipo de economia em que nunca vivemos no passado. No passado, "much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population". Agora, com a paragem do crescimento primeiro e, depois, com o colapso populacional que começará durante esta década, entraremos em "terra incógnita".

"Globalization was always dependent upon the Americans’ commitment to the global Order and that Order hasn’t served Americans’ strategic interests since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Without the Americans riding herd on everyone, it is only a matter of time before something in East Asia or the Middle East or the Russian periphery (like, I don’t know, say, a war) breaks the global system beyond repair . . . assuming that the Americans don’t do it themselves.

...

A central factor in every growth story that accompanies industrialization is that much of the economic growth comes from a swelling population. What most people miss is that there's another step in the industrialization cumurbanization process: lower mortality increases the population to such a degree that it overwhelms any impact from a decline in birth rates . but only for a few decades. Eventually gains in longevity max out, leaving a country a greater population, but with few children. Yesterday's few children leads to today's few young workers leads to tomorrow's few mature workers. And now, at long last, tomorrow has arrived.

...

No matter how you crunch the numbers, China in 2022 is the fastest-aging society in human history.

...

The country's demographic contraction is now occurring just as quickly as its expansion, with complete demographic collapse certain to occur within a single generation. China is amazing, just not for the reasons most opine. The country will soon have traveled from preindustrial levels of wealth and health to postindustrial demographic collapse in a single human lifetime. With a few years to spare. Nor will China die alone. The time-staggered nature of the industrialization process-from Britain to Germany to Russia and northwestern Europe and Japan to Korea to Canada and Spain combined with the steadily accelerating nature of that process, means that much of the world's population faces mass retirements followed by population crashes at roughly the same time. The world's demographic structure passed the point of no return twenty to forty years ago. The 2020s are the decade when it all breaks apart.

For countries as varied as China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, the question isn't when these countries will age into demographic obsolescence. All will see their worker cadres pass into mass retirement in the 2020s. None have sufficient young people to even pretend to regenerate their populations. All suffer from terminal demographics. The real questions are how and how soon do their societies crack apart? And do they deflate in silence or lash out against the dying of the light?

...

Economic development, quality of life, longevity, health, and demographic expansion are all subject to the whims of globalization. Or rather, in this case, deglobalization."

Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.

O fim da globalização (parte I)

"Globalization brought development and industrialization to a wide swath of the planet for the first time, generating the mass consumption societies and the blizzard of trade and the juggernaut of technological progress we all find so familiar. And that reshaped global demographics. Mass development and industrialization extended life spans, while simultaneously encouraging urbanization. For decades that meant more and more workers and consumers, the people who give economies some serious go. One outcome among many was the fastest economic growth humanity has ever seen. Decades of it.

...

The American-led Order is giving way to Disorder. Global aging didn't stop once we reached that perfect moment of growth. Aging continued. It's still continuing. The global worker and consumer base is aging into mass retirement. In our rush to urbanize, no replacement generation was ever born.

Since 1945 the world has been the best it has ever been. The best it will ever be. Which is a poetic way of saying this era, this world-our world-is doomed. The 2020s will see a collapse of consumption and production and investment and trade almost everywhere. Globalization will shatter into pieces. Some regional. Some national. Some smaller. It will be costly. It will make life slower. And above all, worse. No economic system yet imagined can function in the sort of future we face.

...

The coming global Disorder and demographic collapse will do more than condemn a multitude of countries to the past; it will herald the rise of others."

"The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.

Os trouxas engolem tudo

O que nos disse Welch em 2006 quando veio a Portugal? Lembram-se disto?

"Afirmou também que« os gestores que apenas gostam de números e que não querem saber de pessoas – mas elas existem na empresa! – são uns idiotas»."

E o que praticava? Ver "How Jack Welch Revolutionized the American Economy":

"He “instituted a series of mass layoffs,” and enthusiastically industrialized even this process by rating every employee and then each year firing the lowest-rated 10 percent."

Recordar:

• Apologia da flexibilidade - Junho de 2010
• Passou-lhe completamente ao lado ... no fim MacGyver vence a Sandy - Abril de 2011

Continuam a querer que comamos gelados com a testa

Em 2009 escrevi aqui no blogue sobre as espécies que vivem à boca das fumarolas - Fake recoveries, os 3 amigos e a linguagem de carroceiro. Há dias em "Expert opinion" citei este trecho:

"The scholar, of course, had an answer. Scholars always have an answer. To him, the greatness of an idea should be judged by a panel of experts who opine on whether the idea is “novel” and “technically brilliant.” However, in the business context, “well executed” means commercially successful. When I pointed out that there is no known correlation between expert opinion on novelty or technical brilliance and commercial success"

Agora, encontro mais um exemplo da Big Man Economy tão querida das elites portuguesas, "Banco de Fomento vai capitalizar 12 empress de "interesse nacional", incluindo a de Mário Ferreira". Empresas tão boas, ou com projectos tão bons que nem têm acesso a capital da banca comercial.

Lembram-se das campeãs nacionais e as empresas PIN? 

• Os PIN
• Fiem-se nos PIN's e nos campeões nacionais e não corram não, que eu não quero
• Campeões nacionais versus campeões escondidos
• Comemos gelados com a testa!!!

 

Já lhe falaram? (parte II)

Parte I.

Interessante encontrar este exemplo dos dias de hoje, "Falta de stock, el mayor freno en la compra online para el 43% de los consumidores", relacioná-lo com este artigo do mês passado, "A “globalização” morreu. Viva a “blocalização!", com a possibilidade desta política por mais 5 anos, "Alarm in Beijing after announcement zero-Covid policy may last five years".

Com estas forças em movimento como é que nos podiam prometer nem há 1 mês que a inflação alta era transitória? Por que tivemos inflação baixa nas últimas décadas? Por causa da globalização. Se ela está a acabar ...

Entretanto, começo a ler "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan:

“Perhaps the oddest thing of our soon-to-be present is that while the Americans revel in their petty, internal squabbles, they will barely notice that elsewhere the world is ending!!! Lights will flicker and go dark. Famine’s leathery claws will dig deep and hold tight. Access to the inputs—financial and material and labor—that define the modern world will cease existing in sufficient quantity to make modernity possible. The story will be different everywhere, but the overarching theme will be unmistakable: the last seventy-five years long will be remembered as a golden age, and one that didn’t last nearly long enough at that.

The center point of this book is not simply about the depth and breadth of changes in store for every aspect of every economic sector that makes our world our world. It is not simply about history once again lurching forward. It is not simply about how our world ends. The real focus is to map out what everything looks like on the other side of this change in condition. What are the new parameters of the possible? In a world deglobalized, what are the new Geographies of Success?

What comes next?”