After a Late Dinner

Maybe I shouldn't have had the grappa. I'll find out in the morning.

It’s an interesting experience to have four people from four countries –- U.S., Britain, Italy, Belgium -– who are all in more or less the same sort of business so they wind up talking about which is their favorite Italian restaurant in Taipei. We all have children about the same age too, going through the same sorts of things. The moment is a reminder that we really are becoming a single world.

There are more pressing concerns. Italians and other Europeans are pondering the same puzzle as Americans (and increasingly the Taiwanese). We remain competitive by moving our manufacturing operations to China and India. Those countries offer the world low production costs. But what do we offer? In the short term, the ideas, the capital and the expertise that drives the manufacturing. But that can’t last forever. What then, when they’ve become as good at the entire production cycle as us? We’ll need something else to do that the entire globe will find value in. No clue yet what that will be.

This dovetails with doomed discussions I have periodically with a certain editor of books who is convinced I know shit about economics. The reality is I haven’t the energy or interest in providing a clear education. Besides, when a given worldview is internally consistent, any external discussion becomes nothing more than a religious argument.

The weather in northern Italy is unseasonably warm. Apparently it hit 21 last weekend, a record high. Locals are recounting the colder, foggier days of their youth. Interestingly, the Englishmen are recounting the exact same thing. Farmers in Worcestershire are planting wine grapes, something Britain hasn’t been famous for since Roman times. It all raises questions. Some people of course point to it as proof of global warming. The truth is we don’t know. Events caused by weather cycles that have periods longer than we’ve been taking data may appear to be troubling anomalies. But we all do agree there’s no harm in reducing emissions. We only need the industrializing nations to cooperate, and maybe then the biggest polluter of them all will buy in too.

Well, I don’t know if it was the grappa, or the white wine before dinner, the red wine during, or the dessert wine after, but it’s after one in the morning and I’m more wired than the radio towers outside Art Bell’s studio. I think I’ll lie down and stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours.