Session 3 - The Law of Mutual Guarantee
From day to day we can feel more and more vividly that we are living in an increasingly complex, sophisticated, and interdependent world where we must rely on one another. This is why it is possible to speak of a universally common law that holds all of us together: the "Law of Mutual Guarantee." (Mutual Responsibility)"
This common universal law relates not only to countries, societies, international corporations, and international relations, but indeed, to each and every person.
Each year it is becoming clearer that if a bank in Europe or in America falters, it has implications for all of the rest of the countries and they will also feel it, especially China, which produces and sells its products to these continents. Likewise, a problem in China will affect half the world. Economy, finance, and commerce have intricately tied us together to the point that maintaining these connections between us has become vital for our survival, since our food, clothing, heating, medicine, electronics, and every other industry depend on it.
We have progressed to the point that today, there isn't a country in the entire world that provides for its needs by itself. It was only a century ago that each country was almost entirely self-sufficient. This globally interconnected interdependence that we now call "globalization," began when England conquered India and then decided that it was easier to import fruits and vegetables from India, rather than to grow them themselves. And this is how industry began to develop, and then as the Suez Canal was opened, more trade could occur, and world industry grew from there.
People began to understand that industrial specialization was worthwhile because it allowed you to produce one thing, while I produce another, and they produce another, and all of us benefit. Initially, each factory manufactured almost everything it needed, from the nuts and bolts to the complete machine with all of its parts. Even the electricity to keep the factory running was produced "in house." Yet later, industry began to divide production among different factories with one creating the nuts and bolts, another creating electrical parts, another manufacturing electricity, and so on.
And so here we all are today, where producing a car requires a supply chain consisting of thousands of places and numerous countries. In recent years, this phenomenon has become even more conspicuous, as an example, in the automobile industry. Instead of building cars in the manufacturer's home country, many companies have built plants in their designated markets. Thus today, for example, Japanese cars are manufactured anywhere in the world, from the U.S. to India, with the Japanese often running these operations long distance. Yet also, sometimes locally hired managers run the entire manufacturing operation, so that the manufactured car is Japanese only because of its name brand.
It turns out that there are so many convoluted interconnections in every area of manufacture now, that for the most part, there are confusions where we cannot tell which manufacturer produced what, and where. In many countries we can see many different manufacturing plants from other countries being established, sometimes even gas stations or fast food shops, as well. Today in each industry, there are foreign owners that come in for some percentage of the business. Governments don't interfere with this phenomenon because they are profitting because of it: the citizens have jobs, they collect their taxes, and everyone benefits, so it seems that these connections and relationships will continue developing.
Another trend in this development is that once the more developed countries evolved their industries sufficiently, they began to develop in other countries, the so-called "third world" regions—Africa and Asia. They built manufacturing plants and various factories, which introduced the need to educate the local people to work in them. This was then the catalyst for not only schools being established in those countries, but also for the more developed countries to begin taking students into their own universities from those countries.
In this way, the world became further interconnected and even similar through education, cultural exchange, science, and industry. The global connections have become so strong that in America, there is a joke that to make a phone call from New York to Boston, you have to go through operators in India who will connect you. Thus, our various communication lines have made us so interconnected throughout the world, that distance and location have become irrelevant.
If we look even more deeply into this, we will see that our entire planet is connected through a vast, diverse, and multi-layered network of interdependencies. Today it is impossible to accomplish anything without obtaining the specialized equipment, knowledge, and human resources required for it, from all over the world. This is how our world has been built, after having developed in this direction over the last century.
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The Law of Mutual Guarantee acts on all people in the world, no matter where each and every one is, and it connects us all together.
- The development of industry and commerce has come to the point where today, no nation supplies its own needs.
- In the last one hundred years, we have formed a rich and diverse network of interconnections on earth, that connects us all together.
"The higher the organism, the greater the elaboration and interdependence of its part, the greater the need for coordination."Quote from Angell's book, "The Great Illusion," found on crossroadstimes.com: "Like Cells In A Body: Seeing Humanity As Parts Of One Organism"
TED Talk regarding the recently emerging interdependence between people and nations.TED Talk: The Global Power Shift
"A whole new world order, including a new financial order and rules, involving international cooperation, is imperative."Commentary on a Project Syndicate Article: A New World Architecture
"In reshaping or reconstituting the Atlantic civilization, we need to remember this: The 21st century, unlike the period after the Congress of Vienna, is no longer a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Rather, it is a century of multiple networked nodes."Article in theGlobalist.com: A Call for the United States to Rediscover Its Ideals