"Post-manufacturing economy"?

I have just read a recent editorial by Gwyn Morgan, thought provoking as always.

I agree that our economy -- provincially, nationally, and globally, will never return to the status quo ante (pre-2008).

I don't think the editorial is very suggestive of what lies ahead.

I read Wealth of Nations to a different conclusion than do many others. I don't see Smith promoting competition: I see him promoting collaboration (in a framework that was understandable in the late 18th century). I always find it interesting that David Ricardo's two laws (of Comparative Advantage and of Absolute Advantage) both lead to the conclusion that competition -- and impoverishment -- should be avoided. Perhaps in the 21st century we will see a more sophisticated understanding of what Smith and Ricardo were arguing more than 200 years ago.

Over the same 200 years another unhappy outcome has been to 'externalize' many of the real and significant costs of entrepreneurs (and consumers). On the one hand we have treated waste disposal as 'free' (dump the garbage in the stream, send it up the smokestack, plow it into the ground), and on the other hand we have off-loaded real and significant input costs (of gathering resources and workers) onto the community.

What will happen to our economy, especially its global span, as we start to adopt full cost accounting that includes embedded energy costs and life-cycle costs, and then start to require closed extraction/production/manufacturing systems?

If we don't like the delay of commerce at the American border now, what will happen as more and more borders become more and more stiffling, in response to increased concerns about terrorism, pandemics, the arrival of new species of plants and animals that would be threatening locally, environmental refugees, etc.

A thriving society will have an economic sub-system (whether it is growing larger, or not) including some critical requirements:
1. a well-educated citizenry, most of whom must be the products of public school education;
2. tthe will to be better;
3. a culture of honesty;
4. an extensive commons (infra-structure) for which all citizens accept respnsibility; and,
5. a strong sense of the public -- of being 'all in this together'.

My own expectation is that the world 30 years from now will be more global in the way it thinks, and more local in the way it acts.