Where does STUFF come from?
The answer to this seemingly mundane question is actually extremely complex.
Are iPhones and avocados manna from heaven? Or do these technological marvels come from an Earthly location?
When we pick up a book, we are much more likely to think about the content on that book’s pages than to take the time to contemplate where the paper, ink, glue, and cardboard originated or where they all finally came together. I would argue that both content and construction are equally important considerations.
Even if you buy sugar cookies made by a local high schooler at a community bake sale — where do the wheat, sugar, and milk that he or she used to bake those cookies come from?
“Where does stuff come from?” is one of those foundational questions you must ask yourself if you are to awaken yourself to the true nature of the world.
This question also happens to be the one that might help you navigate the rapidly changing geopolitical, business, and human rights environments we face today. It makes sure that you’re not caught flat footed, unprepared, and reflecting retrospectively: “Well, I guess THAT’S where that stuff comes from.”
What is the ‘Stuff Chain’?
At a high level, all stuff comes from minerals, metals, gases, and liquids locked in the ground, diffused through the sky, or grown by organic/biological processes. That ‘raw-stuff’ is then whiz-banged by extremely smart humans into the processed, usable ‘material-stuff’ that feeds manufacturing operations. Many levels of manufacturing operations slowly work that ‘material-stuff’ into the ‘product-stuff’ we love. One last piece: transportation systems (trains, boats, trucks, planes) move all of this ‘stuff’ thousands of miles around the Earth. Pretty simple, eh?
Professionals and industrialists call this whole stream of ‘where stuff comes from’ a ‘supply chain.’ Some call it the ‘value chain’. But to keep it simple, I’m going to talk about ‘where stuff comes from’ as the ‘stuff chain.’
There are enormously complex ‘stuff chains’ underlying any product that you buy in the modern world.
Where Stuff Comes From is a modest attempt to tell compelling stories about how raw materials in the ground and in the sky are transformed through a thrilling web of global mining, processing, manufacturing, transportation, and sales machines into the products that we know and love (and that drive our civilization).
Why do you need to know where ‘Stuff’ comes from?
One of the key principles I want to convey is that the global ‘stuff-chain’ is extremely delicate.
One tiny interaction between two fishing boats somewhere in the South China Sea might make the new refrigerator that you want to buy 25% more expensive.
Worse yet, a hurricane in the Caribbean Sea might push your non-essential surgery in Wyoming back 4 months until the IV bag ‘stuff-chain’ can recover from the only factory that made IV bags for the U.S. being shutting down for a few weeks in Puerto Rico.
In your professional life, knowing about the ‘stuff-chains’ for each of the products and services that you use and provide might be the key to ensuring your business is capable of successfully playing defense in the event of a ‘stuff-chain’ disruption in the not-so-distant future.
“But Max, I don’t work with ‘stuff’. Everything I do is DIGITAL.”
That’s fair. But let me ask you this: when you run your SaaS product with the latest and greatest machine-learning algorithms that have fundamentally transformed your industry, where does that SaaS product run and what do you need to run your machine-learning algorithms?
If we look at the ‘stuff-chain’ for your SaaS technology that seemingly is unrelated to any physical stuff, we quickly realize that the SaaS’s code runs on a cloud server somewhere. And if you’re running powerful machine-learning algorithms, you’re probably using some of the more powerful computers that your cloud provider offers.
Have you ever asked yourself “where does that STUFF (the powerful computers your cloud provider uses) come from?”
Is it possible that the ‘stuff-chains’ for those computers might be challenged, disrupted, or worse in the near future?
Are all of your algorithms designed to run on processors with highly complex ‘stuff-chains’? Are you trading the reliability of running on a wide-range of different processor platforms for the ‘stuff-chain’ complexity that comes with running solely on an esoteric, specialized processor manufactured halfway across the world in an adversarial and or unstable region?
The ‘stuff-chain’ is everywhere and foundational to our personal lives and businesses.
As a lover of mindfulness and gratitude, I’ve come to learn that understanding the intense and DIFFICULT journeys that stuff takes to become OUR stuff helps build a deep gratitude for the ‘stuff’ that I use and depend on as I live a modern life.
Understanding where stuff comes from is a powerful framework to help us live more awake, more grateful, more intentional, more free, and more independent lives.
Conclusion
Over the past year, in part thanks to (1) introspecting about what’s next following my Bachelor of Science in Materials Science & Engineering and my Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, (2) operating at the bleeding edge of emerging technologies, and (3) the global pandemic, I have been thinking non-stop about the security of our most critical stuff chains and how it underpins our past, present, and future economic prospects.
I also read a book that opened my eyes to the deep correlation between our stuff chains and geopolitics throughout history: The Substance of Civilization. In this seminal book, Stephen L. Sass explains how the materials that societies throughout history had access to, and the reliability of that access, determined how successful, dominant, and technologically advanced that civilization ultimately became.
Throughout history, empires from Rome to Samaria to Ancient Israel to 20th century America and many others have risen and fallen based on “where stuff comes from”.
‘Where stuff comes from’ embodies deep first-principle physics, technological, philosophical, strategic, historical, and geopolitical considerations that will define the fate of governments, the present great power conflict, million of businesses in the United Staes and ‘allied’ countries, and every single individual around the world.
I’m not quite sure where exactly this project will go, but if you strap in and follow along, I can guarantee that you’ll find exciting growth as an individual and answers to your own “where does this stuff come from?” question. Thinking through these topics might help you and your business(es) develop the holistic and bottoms-up understanding that you need to make important, evasive, and defensive maneuvers to protect your interests and rethink where the stuff that you consume and sell comes from.
I’ll end with one simple question: Where does your stuff come from?
Learn More About ‘Where Stuff Comes From’
If you’d like to get in touch with Max to learn more about Where YOUR Stuff Comes From, please email at max@wherestuffcomesfrom.com.
