The Gary Null Blog

Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by Creators.com

http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/japan-s-earthquake-jolts-america.html

by Jim Hightower

The corporate chieftains who've relentlessly pushed American factories and our middle-class jobs offshore rationalize their globalization of production by declaring that it's all about efficiency, as though that's the highest value to which a civilization can aspire.

Values aside, however, the problem with corporate efficiencies is that too often they are not. Not efficient, that is. While the corporate scheme of moving stuff from A to B to G to Y in order to achieve the narrow goal of maximizing profits can look so simple, sensible and even slick in a boardroom PowerPoint presentation, it's often calamitous in the real world. The problem with the best-laid plans of corporate globalizers is that they largely ignore inconvenient facts of life. Such as earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns.