6 Week Friday Post

aChapter 1

“The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger”

By Marc Levinson

.     Identify a selection from this chapter that you found particularly interesting and explain why you selected it.

I thought the history of the advancements in transportation was interesting. It’s interesting to think that before the steamship, the only long distance mode of transportation people had was the horse and carriage. The local businesses couldn’t expand past their small area because of the high cost of shipping. Then came railroad, refrigerated railcar, truck and passenger cars, commercial aviation, and container shipping. It’s interesting to think about how the infrastructure transformed along with these innovations. These innovations transformed how people and products move, and thereby changed how people communicate around the world.

b.    How does the author see the development of the shipping container contributing to globalization?

The author sees the development of the shipping container as a major role of the globalization of the economy because of the extremely sharp drop in freight costs. The author doesn’t give the container the sole cause for the globalization because it “would be foolhardy” to do so. There are a multitude of things that contributed to globalization but the author makes the argument that the container, which significantly reduced shipping costs, was a key player.

c.     Who do you see gaining and losing from this transformation of global transportation?

Businesses that adapt to the new transportation will have huge gains in both developing countries and developed countries. However, developing countries have an advantage because they can make products cheaper.

Consumers gained a many more choices for the products they could buy along with cheaper products but workers have lost their steady increase in wage and benefits because the employer gained power.

           

Globalization has made competition a global reality making companies in the US compete with companies in Italy and India.