Even those states that had best prepared for the risk of a pandemic ended up, over the years, lowering their guard. The use of stockpiling has almost become an uneconomic practice. As a result, just-in-time flows replaced stocks. This extension of value chains, and the extreme ease with which they could be set up, naturally fueled the idea that there was no longer a problem of supply, given the abundance of supply worldwide. In Wuhan, the birthplace of the pandemic, more than 300 of the world’s 500 largest firms had set up shop. The digitalization of the economy has amplified this movement, which has benefited many emerging countries, particularly China, which has thus captured a large part of textile production and consumer electronics, but also India in other industries such as pharmaceuticals. All this has been achieved without great difficulty, given the collapse of transport costs and the development of telecommunications. These chains make it possible to break down the manufacture of a good in different locations to minimize production costs. In the last decade, globalization has been amplified by the development of more and more extensive value chains. Its consequences will therefore go far beyond what was experienced in 2008. No economist could have imagined that this stop, which confined several billion people to their homes, would have been unimaginable. Initially a health shock, COVID-19 very quickly became a totally new economic and social shock. It will become more pronounced afterward. This questioning was already underway before the crisis began. But it will call into question a certain number of its modalities and ideological presuppositions, in particular the famous neo-liberal triptych: open markets, the retreat of the State, and privatizations. This pandemic will not mark the end of globalization. It calls for the mobilization of the instruments of the resilience of democracies, and of a European Union that is playing its future, particularly in the confidence of the people. It questions broken global governance, overwhelmed by national egoism and the temptations of closure.
It questions the current form of globalization and the neo-liberal ideology that has accompanied it to date. The unpredictable crisis of COVID-19 raises fundamental questions at several levels. On the political level: What system of governance and what institutions need to be reinvented? On what foundations?.On the economic level: What economic model should we put in place to generate more wealth, a better distribution of this wealth in a globalized environment?.On the health and ethical level: What ethical and human rights challenges must the health system face?.
0 kommentar(er)
