The Perfect Storm to End an era of CHEAP In summary, you and I likely witnessed the cheapest phase of human industrialized history. Cheap was made possible by plentiful and freshly-leveraged foreign labor, abundant food and energy, powerful computing and internet connectivity, imbalanced environmental standards, cheap freight and affordable housing. We have reached a cathartic limit. Global powers will use trade (reward) or boycott (punishment) as the behaviors of totalitarian regimes become harder to ignore — and now we must pay for all of the value received that includes the past and present cost of politics, wars, poor planning and bad policy. Going forward, it will matter more to be energy-efficient, locally-sourced, automated, robotic, smaller and nimble.