A POST-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

With the advent of the industrial revolution a pattern of production was established that was successful under the circumstances of that time. I wonder if it is still valid.

For the last 100 or so years we have extracted raw products, shipped them long distances to a centralized place where the raw product was formed into a manufactured product. Then the manufactured goods were reshipped back out to many different destinations for sale. The shipping of raw products in bulk was efficient enough to make the advantages of centralized manufacturing profitable.

Reshipping was less efficient because of the many destinations involved, and because there was additional weight for packaging, record keeping for multiple items, and sales expenses. But while energy was cheap the system worked.

But what happens when shipping is no longer inexpensive? Shipping raw product to central locations, only to be manufactured, repackaged and reshipped may not be the most cost efficient way to do business because of the transportation costs.

Is there another way? What if manufacturing were decentralized and greater care was taken in shipping the raw product? What if careful efficient routes were developed for raw products that would drop off product as it was transported for regional distribution? This would reduce the amount of product in volume and weight as deliveries were made, and thereby reduce the expense of shipping raw product overall.

Then, what if, instead of having huge central-manufacturing plants, numerous mini-plants were built across the country in various regions. Then only the finished product needed in the region would need to be manufactured, and shipping finished product could be restricted to local regions. This would greatly reduce shipping costs for finished products.

While this may seem to have little to do with bees and agriculture, I think it does. You see, that is the model of our capitalistic country for the first hundred and fifty years of its existence. Small farms created the products that served a region. The raw products were sent too many small manufacturing enterprises that served a region, sometimes single families. Shipping of product on all ends of production, manufacturing, and consumption was kept to a minimum. That worked because transportation costs were expensive and inefficient. Without petroleum power, electricity, refrigeration and highways, shipping was just inefficient.

I believe that the industrial revolution was possible because of inexpensive energy. In the future, perhaps near future, the price of transportation is going to increase substantially due to increases in the cost of energy. Petroleum may yet last for many years. Sources such as coal, natural gas, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar and others will certainly be developed. However, the tremendous capital expenses required for these sources of energy is going to make the cost of transpiration continue to increase.

If the industrial paradigm is based upon inexpensive transportation, and if transportation continues to increase in cost, then the only alternative would seem to be a new industrial revolution structured in a far more decentralized manner. Perhaps the family farm will become economically feasible again, along with family manufacturing plants scattered across the nation. The computer is a general purpose machine, so perhaps it could lead us to regional general purpose manufacturing facilities.