No cuts, no takebacks!

It's no secret that the U.S. is losing footing as the world's super power and there are many other countries that have lived in our shadow that are eager to gain a bigger slice of the prosperity pie.

While this is hardly good news for us, it does have numerous implications. One of them is that this presumably everyone wants the same technology goodies and gadgets that we enjoy. Who wouldn't want an ipod? Or even a microwave! A car, indoor plumbing, etc., In turn, this means higher energy consumption, and potential energy shortages, crises and even war over energy.

This is another topic that I have previously commented on. But again I found an interesting tidbit on potential preventative conflict-resolution from the most unlikely of sources- Dell Computers.

The theory is proposed by Thomas Friedman, in his work the World is Flat, but it based on the Dell model of business. Friedman calls it "the Dell Theory."

"The Dell Theory stipulates: no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain. Because people embedded in major global supply chains don't want to fight old-time wars anymore {Friedman would know- he is a foreign news correspondent} They want to make just-in-time deliveries of goods and services- and enjoy the rising standards of living that come with that. . . (421) It is one thing to lose your McDonald's [in a developing nation]. It is quite another to fight a war that costs you your place in a twenty-first century supply chain that may not come back around for a long time." (425) (all quotes taken from the 2005 edition of the World is Flat by Thomas Friedman)

Just like when we were children with a very defined inherent sense of fairness and justice, we wouldn't allow somebody to cut in front of us in the lunch line or take back the toy they had just offered to us it seems equally unlikely that the rest of the world will be sympathetic to an upstart nation who thinks that the only way to get ahead is to throw a tantrum or discharge a nuke at its nearest offending neighbor.

This may not prove to be infallibly true, but just like children, nobody wants to play with the selfish brat.