Your post brought to mind a truth about our economic system that few consider these days.
The truth is that at some point of economic growth and interconnectedness, economies of scale become DIS-economies of scale.
That is, as organizations (businesses, companies, governments) grow, the efficiency of operation and cost to the user decreases, until a point is reached in which further growth and concentration of resources starts to decrease the efficiency and increase the costs.
Using the "power grid" as an example, to maintain a large interconnected group of power stations and users, necessitates operating huge generating systems running 24/7, plus a huge bureaucracy, and the transport of huge amounts of fuel from source to centralized generating systems, while at the same time leaving the entire system vulnerable to a widespread collapse of the entire system from a cause that would be a minor inconvenience to a small part of the system if the users were in smaller, separated networks.
If manufactured goods were produced locally in areas where they were to be sold rather than in giant sweatshops thousands of miles away and shipped at great cost to the purchasers and the environment, not only would this create more jobs locally, but the goods would be much less costly to purchase.
I read recently that a company that raises chickens in the U.S. plans to ship the chickens to China for processing and then ship them back to the U.S. for sale. That chicken grower must be owned by an oil company or a shipping company. While it may be good for corporate profits, how would it benefit the consumer who will have to pay for shipping costs both ways?
