Barry Lynn, a fellow at the nonpartisan think tank New America Foundation, has reported around the world for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. This global perspective led him to question the stability of corporate operations in today’s economically integrated landscape. The result, End of the Line, is a provocative discussion of the limits of outsourcing and logistics in the context of globalization.
As Lynn notes, business activities have become so streamlined that any disturbance to the global supply chain—be it earthquake, epidemic, or terrorist attack—reverberates worldwide and harms a company’s ability to create or distribute its end products, including food, medicine, and machinery. No single company is responsible for managing the risk of its own distribution system. That flexibility, he says, has made Americans less safe and less free.
Two of his answers are greater corporate transparency and stiffer government regulation, especially antitrust regulation. Companies should be required to spread their suppliers among more than one nation, he writes, to minimize the ripple effects of a disaster.
In the end, Lynn challenges readers to think creatively about making the global economy work for peace and prosperity. He reminds us that doing nothing is a choice, but one with potentially dire consequences.
- Cynthia D. Churchwell