James Stout

And this has been causing lots of production issues across like a whole variety of sectors that use plastics.

Now, the bottom hasn't just completely fallen out yet.

And it's worth taking a little bit of time to examine why.

And the reason why it hasn't immediately collapsed is actually, strangely, the same reason why we're in this mess from the first place.

Which is that, in a lot of ways, the way that our system of production works, the way that we produce things in the world, and the way that we move things around...

is made in the image of oil.

So what do I mean by that?

What I mean is that the system of production is very nodal, right?

It operates on a whole bunch of these nodes, and you have a node where a part of a production is happening,

And then that node moves an item from one thing to another where it goes to another stage of production process.

And inputs and outputs come in in these nodes.

And the thing about these nodes, right, is that in theory, the way the system is supposed to be designed, right, and the way that it's been sort of, they call it like flexibilization to some extent, right?

The way that it's supposed to work is that, like, okay, so, like, if you are a company that needs to get, like, I don't know, you're like a ramen company, to take an example, that's been in the news, at least in these, in, like, in East Asia, is, like, there's been disruption to, like, ramen-making companies, right?

And you need plastic.

You have, like, one plastic supplier you're normally going to, but there are a bunch of other ones, right?

And so, you know, or maybe a better way to explain this would be using the example of

Like, the way that, like, fast fashion works and the way that, like, dropshipping works, right?

Where there are, like, there are all of these different, like, small sort of factories around China or, like, these small, like, sort of garment production places where you can, like, very, very quickly crank out the same, like, dress or whatever.

And if you're doing the dropshipping, you can, like, source your dropship stuff from one of, like, a hundred of these places, right?

Now, this is what I mean when I say that it's nodal, is that it's designed in such a way...