Wow. Two 'graphs, three points, and each an interesting one. Back to front:

why can't we chain together a string of ocean barges in a big circle with stops at LA, Astoria, Seatle, Hokaido, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, with an intermediary stop in Hawaii? Then we could use land based solar, wind, and wave power on the cable instead of all that fuel oil to move our cargo containers around the world.....

Is there a mech. eng. in the room? Intuitively, I would worry that the power losses from mechanical transmission would be too high, that unless you kept the thing saturated carrying useful loads the weight of the cable would be absurdly high, that cable breaks would be incredibly common, that you need to build anchored platforms in way-too-deep ocean, and (of course) that metal thieves would sneak up at night and steal the cable for scrap :-). It's an amusing picture, though.

Have you heard that people are, in fact, working out the practicality of fitting sails to shipping vessels? Not quite the same idea as transmitting land-based power but it does at least use wind to reduce fuel requirements. Just imagine the site of a sailing ship that large...

prepardness and demand for utility would increase productive capacity- but far more likely productive capacity where labor is cheap than where it is expensive,

That's a miscommunication between us. By (survival and sustainability related) "demand for utility" I meant "demand for utility at hand". Guy has had a couple of pieces lately that illustrate. One asks the question: "Is the UK capable of manufacturing a 0-imports wheelbarrow, if it had to?" The other asks: "Is this county capable of making, say, a screw?" That's more like the kind of "demand for utility" I was thinking of.

Those are tricky kinds of preparedness to arrange because, as you say, comparative advantage gives a positive disincentive most of the time to actually manufacture purely domestic or regional wheelbarrows and screws. Rubber for wheels, sheet metal for buckets, and oil to run generators, etc. all come much cheaper off the ships at the loading dock. Well, for now. So how do you justify spending to develop those capacities of a robust region?

Well, if demand for preparedness were sufficiently high then even while global trade is going strong there are ways to do it. People might tax themselves, in some instances, much as we tax ourselves to maintain fire stations and paramedics. Entrepreneurs might find clever "multi-purpose" designs and "flexible input" designs so that tomorrow's native machine shop making screws is today's global market machine shop making.... who knows. Or people might simply develop these capacities under private ownership, essentially as a hobby and as educational facility to keep bootstrapping knowledge strong.

It's that kind of demand I meant: a kind that, by definition, isn't content with the state of comparative advantage at any one time.

That would still create ancillary demand (for the tools needed to bootstrap the bootstrapping tools) of a sort that would increase demand for labor where labor is cheapest, raw materials where they are cheapest, etc. But that global trade would be directed to improving local capacity.

When local productive capacity is high and flexible, perhaps I read too much Jane Jacobs but I would expect that the entrepreneurial spirit would be irresistible. People wouldn't just keep the idled factory tidy, dusting it off every now and then. They'd find uses for it even when globalism is in full force. Perhaps the machine shop would be exporting really exquisite and highly specialized lab equipment. Perhaps the scrap metal refinery would be selling sheet metal locally (to keep shipping costs down), below cost, at market prices -- but making margins using waste heat to power and rent space in a cold storage warehouse to local farmers.

A good way to keep unemployment down, and thus help to stabilize geopolitics, is to have an improvisational, abundant, productive capacity. "Oh no! 200 local workers just got laid off." Ok, well, trot out any of the dozens new product ideas sitting on the shelf, rearrange some machines in an underutilized shop, and give them new jobs. Simple as that.

It doesn't work if the underutilized shop isn't there. It doesn't work if "step 1" has to be "import capital, export debt". The hypothesis here is that the steps that make regions more robustly prepared are the same steps that build an "improvisational, abundant, productive capacity" and thus help to reduce or eliminate the need to import capital and export debt just to begin a new activity.

The problem with that is that even the POOREST American is the elite in this world.

Can we retire this old trope yet?

The elites of the world are the elites of the world and they can be found almost everywhere. The rising middle classes are most definitely more typical of India than America. America lacks famine-stricken regions, for now, to be sure but America's poorest certainly have a hefty share of food insecurity, housing insecurity, poor health and shortened life spans, etc.

I almost conceded that, well, Americans universally enjoy some roman empire-style amenities like running water and sewage systems but then I remembered the numbers of people shitting on the streets. (Enter Disco to explain that, yeah, but that's all meth-head shit. :-)

And, more to the point, if we're talking about wealth rather than riches it isn't at all clear Americans are all that "elite". Median and average income, gdp, etc. are all pretty good, sure. The robustness of domestic tranquility? Looks pretty shaky to me, at least.

Oh, I just remembered. Your cables and barges idea. I kept thinking I'd heard it before but couldn't think where. I'm pretty sure I didn't hear it before but it does remind me "that sci-fi novel" (was it "Snowcrash"?) that featured sovereign floating city-states comprised with a core of lashed together barges.

-t