How the World Ran Out of Everything

Inside the Global Supply Chain

By: Peter S. Goodman

Narrated by: Michael David Axtell

By the New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent, an extraordinary journey to understand the worldwide supply chain—exposing both the fascinating pathways of manufacturing and transportation that bring products to your doorstep, and the ruthless business logic that has left local communities at the mercy of a complex and fragile network for their basic necessities.

"A tale that will change how you look at the world."—Mark Leibovich

One of Foreign Policy's "Most Anticipated Books of 2024"

How does the wealthiest country on earth run out of protective gear in the middle of a public health catastrophe? How do its parents find themselves unable to locate crucially needed infant formula? How do its largest companies spend billions of dollars making cars that no one can drive for a lack of chips?

The last few years have radically highlighted the intricacy and fragility of the global supply chain. Enormous ships were stuck at sea, warehouses overflowed, and delivery trucks stalled. The result was a scarcity of everything from breakfast cereal to medical devices, from frivolous goods to lifesaving necessities. And while the scale of the pandemic shock was unprecedented, it underscored the troubling reality that the system was fundamentally at risk of descending into chaos all along. And it still is. Sabotaged by financial interests, loss of transparency in markets, and worsening working conditions for the people tasked with keeping the gears turning, our global supply chain has become perpetually on the brink of collapse.

In How the World Ran Out of Everything, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman reveals the fascinating innerworkings of our supply chain and the factors that have led to its constant, dangerous vulnerability. His reporting takes listeners deep into the elaborate system, showcasing the triumphs and struggles of the human players who operate it—from factories in Asia and an almond grower in Northern California, to a group of striking railroad workers in Texas, to a truck driver who Goodman accompanies across hundreds of miles of the Great Plains. Through their stories, Goodman weaves a powerful argument for reforming a supply chain to become truly reliable and resilient, demanding a radical redrawing of the bargain between labor and shareholders, and deeper attention paid to how we get the things we need.

From one of the most respected economic journalists working today, How the World Ran Out of Everything is a fiercely smart, deeply informative look at how our supply chain operates, and why its reform is crucial—not only to avoid dysfunction in our day to day lives, but to protect the fate of our global fortunes.

©2024 Peter S. Goodman (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Great insight into the relationship intertwining global logistics, corporate interests, and political interests

Highly recommend to anyone who wants to better understand the macro of the world around them. This not only explains the how of things that impacts us daily, but also the why.

Eye opening !!!!!

Very informative on the true nature of capitalism. GREED, POWER, MONEY are behind it all

Well Researched .

How the World Ran Out of Everything by Peter S. Goodman is an insightful exploration of the global supply chain’s fragility, highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Goodman provides a compelling analysis of systemic vulnerabilities, though some critics argue it overlooks specific pandemic factors. Essential reading for understanding modern global trade complexities.

Will read again

Great insights. Will read again. Love the trucker stories. Covers both monopolies and supply chain.

Listen to this book!

Extremely inciteful, a wonderful expose into the true horrors of corporate greed! Listen and tell a friend

A book everyone should listen too!

A real insight into corporate greed and corruption across America and beyond! Well worth listening too

Excellent!

I highly recommend this book to supply chain enthusiasts, academics, and researchers. I learned a ton from this book.

You need look no further than Financialization

Through a gripping exposé of actual events and people caught at every point along the array of the critical supply chain dysfunctions that have affected everyone, Peter S. Goodman brings to life for the reader the lives and suffering of multiple real people struggling with circumstances not of their own making. Goodman's presentation places these persons directly and personally in front of you—along with the sights, smells, and untenable tensions in the worlds they are compelled to try to exist in. This is a real world account of the impossible choices faced by manufacturers, shippers, truckers, railroads, and maritime shipping companies. This book contains story after story after story of the choices that no one should ever be forced to make—yet it's happening every day, crying out for someone to stop it.

Goodman demonstrates that the suffering of the real people chronicled in this book is not happening by accident or other forces of nature—certainly not by the mythical abstraction called the "free market." Although there are numerous real life heroic actions in this book (some done out of necessity), any solutions to the underlying causes are not immediately apparent. Globalization became established as a fact of life, with its conveniences and lower prices for consumers accompanied by job losses in the industrialized countries and sweat shop conditions in the producing countries—factors that are demonstrably interrelated. With consultants distorting the just in time logistics methodology to irrational extremes, the supply chain was already becoming stressed when the COVID-19 pandemic exposed its rupture points. Goodman illustrates clearly that the main cause for this dysfunction was and is finalcialization, with its unyielding demands for shareholder value above all other concerns. Even with partial trends toward onshoring or at least nearshoring, the uncertainties of nation state conflict (including war) add to the costs eventually paid by everyone just to prepare for contingencies—and these efforts in and of themselves provide no cure for financialization.

Against this backdrop is the dominant corporate arrangement, in which CEOs have little choice than to make their every move aimed toward making the books appear maximally profitable in the immediate moment—any executive failing to do so may expect to be replaced with someone willing and able to squeeze out more pennies (regardless of the means applied to do so). In the relentless effort to pursue shareholder value (ahead of greater moral values), corporate boards and executives are acting like private equity firms by cannibalizing their companies to feed the greed of their oligarchic masters—it's their own house they're eating (and our house too). With inequality at obscenely extreme levels, this behavior is unsustainable.

This book (perhaps unwittingly) conveys the tone and gist of the classic 1960s song, The Pusher (look up the song and its lyrics if you've never heard of it)—substituting "financializer" for "pusher" in the song provides a fair sense of Goodman's point about the immense damage produced by placing shareholder value and short term profits ahead of all other concerns. The consultants who are pushers of shareholder payouts over the health of companies, employees, customers, and communities are rightly damned for the losses and human suffering they've caused. Journalists, also, have become pushers in their own way—in a world where survivability requires surrendering any semblance of professionalism in return for access to news sources and the parties that have become essential to staying in the game. The lack of public outrage over the flagrant violations of human decency documented in this book is itself the result of Journalists (like social media algorithms) prioritizing clickbait over truth—Journalism is yet another profession hollowed out by the inhuman emphasis on shareholder value.

We need an effective no-nonsense industrial policy—something that is clearly lacking with the current oligarchic manipulation of the government. Although it is reasonable for investors to expect a fair return on their investments, no one has the right to do so using methods that destroy human lives along with the planet itself. Financialization should be classified as a "Schedule I" economic narcotic—and enforced as such.

A must read for manufacturers!

This is one of the most relevant business books I've ever read. As an American manufacturer who produces in China, I spend a lot of time wondering what the F is going on and how I'll survive it. Through Goodman's story of an entrepreneur's manufacturing and supply chain woes, I better understand my own. In 2021 when my containers were taking 3x longer than usual and costing 3x more, I couldn't make sense of it. This book showed what was going on behind the scenes, when the "investor class" was profiting from the supply chain disaster.

It's helpful to hear about what other manufacturers do to diversify their supply chains and be less dependent on China. Whether Biden or Trump wins, tariffs threaten my survival. So I'm simultaneously working with factories in four countries to get quotes. Four! And rushing to travel to all of them before November. That is incredibly time consuming, so Goodman's book saved me time by profiling companies that have tweaked or transformed their supply chain in some of the ways I'm considering.

I strongly recommend this book and look forward to following Goodman's reporting, as it helps me make sense of my own (terrifying) situation.

Eye Opening Read on Greed

Your search to save a dollar is hurting the working class and bolstering the fortunes of the rich.