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Miscellaneous Ramblings
Editorial by: D Chaisson
Ah, the Internet with its Email, social media and IM's is arguably the most recognized part of our Global Network! You may long for a day free of emails, FB postings, IM's, but how would you get anything done without the Internet?
But our Global Network has other and perhaps more consequential components that impact our daily lives. This is the economic interconnectivity of our Global Network lives. We are pretty used to getting our iPhones from China, various clothing items from Viet Nam, Murchie's Tea from Canada (try it !!), blueberries from Chile, our cherished Porsches's from Germany, ... the list goes on and on. And frankly, this economic interconnectivity has been working pretty well for us, as consumers, though maybe not so well for people whose jobs were "off shored".
But how has this economic interconnectivity be working lately?
With COVID-19, the economic network was disturbed and its efficient performance degraded. The term "supply chain" became popularized and became a reason that certain things were on back order, a reason why the ports in LA were backed up with hundreds of vessels sitting out in the harbor waiting to be unloaded, why things we normally got/would have gotten were delayed. Supply chain problems have touched everyone, one way or another. The "chip shortage" was a subset of supply chain problems. For us "car" people, it resulted in another reflection of the network's degraded performance, presenting in delayed new car deliveries and used car prices going through the roof.
New Porsche sales in 2021 were 22% better than in 2020 (data from Feb Panorama) so, it seemed to be "immune" to the COVID network disruption. But as with any disruption to a living "network", the ebbs and flows seem to come back at you. First was the sinking of the Felicity Ace, carrying 4000 Porsches, Audis' and a few Bentleys. I asked my friend, Gunter Feldman, Service Manager at Fremont Porsche, if they had any cars on the Felicity Ace, he said, " No, but it still affects us. All our allocations are pushed back since Porsche has to rebuild the lost cars first." Didn't see that coming.
Then there is the tragic situation in Ukraine. And the less morally significant issue that a portion of Porsche wiring harnesses were manufactured in western Ukraine. So the war there has shut down Macan and Taycan production. I'm sure Porsche will re-source the harnesses from more secure locations, but the disruption is not trivial.
I'm not going to propose "solutions" to such disruptions to the economic network (this column is Miscellaneous Ramblings, not Specific Solutions!), but to suggest that we balance our responses to such network disruptions. Many people are hurt with disruptions, even getting killed in Ukraine; we need to keep that in mind when tempted to complain about disruptions to "our" consumer needs that are dependent on the interconnectivity of the economic network.
Maybe I should put something up on Facebook about this.
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