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WotD: Grey Rhino
The English language has various idioms referring to African animals.
White elephant, stick your head in the sand (ostrich) and grey rhinos, to name a few.
Today, we’re looking at grey rhinos.
A grey rhino is a highly probable, obvious, major event that we are ignoring or for which we are not preparing properly.
Not long ago, I created a lesson of the same name, so please feel free if you want to check that one out.
Anyways, a grey rhino is a highly probable, obvious, major event that we are ignoring or for which we are not preparing properly.
The West’s dependency on China was put in a new light as a grey rhino when the pandemic hit.
The West relied on China for decades to produce goods, but now the country is in a position where it can dictate what happens to our economies.
We got a clear picture of when there was a personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage, and we realized most of it was imported from China, which didn’t export it because they required it themselves.
We had put all our eggs in one basket.
In future, this could lead to an economic disaster if China decides to stop trading with Japan.
It’s not too late to deal with this grey rhino, but it will take some time for other countries to replace China or repatriate some manufacturing processes that have been offshored.
The United States has already taken some action in that both TMSC and Intel have begun the construction of multi-billion-dollar chip plants in Arizona.
Numerous other grey rhinos affect Western countries, such as climate change, increasing national debt, and the income gap.
If we begin now, we may get out in front of these issues.
If we continue to delay, well, it may already be too late.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 65.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.