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Showing posts from June 27, 2021

Global supply chains and sustainability

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(Acknowledgment: All images used in this post sourced from Google image search)   As kids, whenever we were difficult, our grandpa used to scold us: "Don't be the dog in the manger!" We didn't know what it meant, at that time. This metaphor, coming from Greek mythology, talks of a dog sitting on a bale of hay and shooing away the cattle that come to graze on the hay. "Dog in the manger" basically refers to someone who blocks others from using some resource, and neither uses it themselves.  This metaphor was made famous (notorious) by Winston Churchill, who used it to justify colonial domination based on a sense of racial superiority:  What Churchill didn't (or didn't want to) realise was that the native communities weren't protecting a "resource"-- but a complex ecosystem of being of which they were a part of, and would have probably gladly accepted others who can enrich this ecosystem harmoniously. Sadly, Churchill was too deluded abou