Globalization is a pretty old concept that made its first appearance in the early 1900s. It was a concept that was originally developed to make it easier for existing companies to expand and new companies to grow by reducing overhead costs. In recent decades, however, the concept of globalization has shifted to become the idea of outsourcing. In the past decade, we have been promoting the idea of outsourcing our manufacturing overseas to developing countries where labor is cheap. It might seem, at first, that this is a fabulous idea for helping these developing countries to grow their economies and an excellent cost-saving measure for the companies, a win-win situation. However, what we often don’t realize is that this is merely a simple shift of responsibility and not acknowledging the unlying issue of unsustainable consumerism. In the 1950s, there was a huge pollution problem in the U.S, as there were smogs everywhere, and it was obviously not good for our health. So what did we do to resolve it? We started cutting down on local manufacturing, which is when we shifted some of our factories overseas to other countries in the North American continent, primarily Mexico. In the 1970s, as the U.S and China’s relationship became less hostile, cozier, and more collaborative, we started to shift some of our production factories of everyday essentials overseas to China. And yes, China’s economy did grow exponentially, and China has quickly become a manufacturing giant. But China also suffered a lot of the issues that we experienced in the 1950s, which were uncontrollable smog and daunting pollution. The pollution had gotten so out of control and so bad that I remember when I was visiting China back in the early 2010s. When the plane landed in Beijing, I could barely breathe without coughing, and my skin started to have rashes from being exposed to a severe allergic environment. Fast-forwarding to the present-day U.S, what did we exactly get from all of this? In my opinion, we did enjoy lower prices of consumer goods, but that’s as far as the benefits go. We have also suffered immensely from being reliant on other countries. An excellent example of that is semiconductors or chips for short. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, manufactures and dominates more than 50% of all global chip supply and market share. This means, strategically speaking if China does one day indeed invades or reunify Taiwan, as China calls it, by force, we might have no choice but to bring ourselves to Taiwan’s defense simply because we are so dependent on them. And chip foundries cannot just be built overnight; it will take years to bring ourselves out of that dependency. We would need to invest heavily in infrastructure, such as water supply, to be able to sustain the massive amount of water used in making these chips. So what can we do about it? Quite frankly speaking, it is too late, but it is still better to bring some of the critical manufacturing back to the states to ease our dependency. But ultimately speaking, we need to find a solution to our unsustainable consumerism and find a way to scale back on the need. Sadly and perhaps the upcoming global economic recession might just help us.