It’s time to make a few things clear. If one measures power strictly according to GDP at market exchange rates, then the United States is roughly 250 percent more powerful than China. If one uses a combination of metrics – as does, for example, the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s 2025 project – then China possesses a little less than half of America’s relative power. Even on the financial side, the U.S. still reigns, and, hype notwithstanding, the dollar is not going anywhere as the world’s reserve currency. The renminbi could be an alternative in the far future – but after the 2008 financial crisis, China is loath to open up its capital markets. Even by the less tangible metrics of soft power, the United States still outperforms China handily in new public opinion surveys from the Pacific Rim by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Beyond the loss of patrimony, the disconnect from food production puts the capital in a precarious food security situation. With a food system relying on unsustainable oil-fed transportation, not only Paris but also most cities throughout the world are at risk. If the transport system were to fail, food would run out on supermarket shelves within a few days.

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Cities can’t go on being disconnected from food production, trapped in a globalized food system that is dependent on fuel, generating waste and not producing anything. If we are serious about tackling the issue of their self-sufficiency, solutions have to be the fruit of concerted work by producers, chefs, activists, academics, and politicians, all of them gathered around the ones for whom this work has to be done: the consumers.

The takeaway then is not that all prices will trend towards free, but instead that in the absence of traditional benchmarks pricing trends towards chaos. As traditional standards like Don Draper’s professionalism lose their appeal, we not only lose benchmarks for setting prices, but we also lose any frame of reference for determining when a monetary transaction should be expected in the first place.

I honestly don’t want to knock the hard work of executives who are struggling to survive in a terrible economy. But really. 20,000 products? Each one the result of hours, days, weeks, months of meetings and discussions and agonized decision making. Each one apparently accompanied by a breathless press release describing how it represents genuine innovation, not to mention fabulous design. And yes, some of the products will probably even be a welcome addition to our gadget-laden homes. But this as the face of modern day innovation? Oy.