Science & Tech Quote by Laurent Fabius

The line lands like a polite slap: the comforting story you told yourselves about globalization has expired. As a statesman, Laurent Fabius isn’t chasing applause; he’s doing something more consequential in policy culture: withdrawing permission to remain complacent. The “automatic adjustment” he targets is the technocratic lullaby of the late 20th century - the idea that markets would self-correct as poorer countries’ wages rose, while rich countries would stay ahead through innovation, and cheap transport would keep supply chains smooth enough to avoid real social shock.

Notice the architecture of reassurance. It’s a three-part hedge: wages will converge, technology will differentiate, logistics will cushion. Each clause is a political sedative, because it frames disruption as temporary and solvable without hard choices. Fabius calls it “reassuring” to underline that it was less an analysis than a coping mechanism - a way for elites to defend open trade while treating job loss, deindustrialization, and wage stagnation as transitional noise.

“But this reassuring analysis is out of date” is the pivot from economics to legitimacy. It signals that the old consensus has run into new realities: hyper-mobile capital, slower wage convergence, automation hollowing out mid-skill work, and supply-chain fragility that turns “costs of transport” into a vulnerability rather than a stabilizer. The subtext is a warning to governments: if you keep governing as if the adjustment is automatic, voters will do the adjusting for you, at the ballot box, in angrier, less controllable ways.