Reddit reviews The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
We found 28 Reddit comments about The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
The book below is a fantastic read that directly addresses your question...
The shortest version is ports (anywhere) are a function of the economy, the local labor market, and the entire supply chain of delivering "stuff" from A-to-B.
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Once containerization took over post-war, the economics quickly and irreversibly shifted in favor of inland factories.
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So no more factories in New York City meant there was no need to maintain and service the piers to bring raw materials to those factories. The factories were only built adjacent to the piers because it was so time consuming and expensive to transfer raw materials. (Even the layout of Manhattan's "grid" of streets took this into account, with the avenues more tightly spaced on the coasts than in the middle of the island. This allowed for good to move more efficiently between factories as they came off the ships.)
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Now, what do I mean by "take over"? I'd have to read the book again, but I recall containerization allowed for moving most goods at, without hyperbole, ~10% the cost of traditional break bulk shipping. If it could fit inside a container, you could move it for really, really cheap. No one involved in shipping could ignore the economic advantages of containerization. And those who tried to resist slowly bled out as "the box" took over.
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(Break bulk is where individual pieces are carried on/off a ship. Think "On The Waterfront" and a bunch of people carrying bags on their shoulders. With containers, what previous could take a week could be done in less than a day.)
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You'll note the shipping actually increased too...but it shifted to New Jersey, which constructed new piers better suited to containerization rather than break bulk shipping. By the time Manhattan and Brooklyn tried to make new piers, it was too...the containerization infrastructure was in place on the mainland.
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But what about the longshore men? Did they have jobs to do after the piers went away? Well...automation is always rough on manual labor. Lots of longshore men lost their jobs. Crane operators were the new king. The book is an interesting history lesson in the history of American labor/management relationships, particularly in how containerization was handled differently in New York vs. San Francisco, and even Manhattan/Brooklyn vs. Newark.
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Here's a link to the book if anyone is interested. It's well written for even a novice and consumable for a non-academic. The writing style is not overly dry either. There is a narrative to understand. The bibliography is huge too. It's basically the history of shipping "stuff", which in turn answers the question "When and why did Manhattan's ports go away?"
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger By: Marc Levinson
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EDIT: I'll add that any actual historians can perhaps comment in better detail. But if you want a resource to answer your question, and then some, this book is tailored to do so.
I recommend The Box by Levinson
Longshoreman unions fighting automation is only a delaying action. In the late 60's / early 70's the San Francisco port longshoreman union blocked container ships so thoroughly that Oakland saw an opening and created a huge container port. Result: no more commercial shipping in SF.
A good book to read about this is The Box.
Every new pass of automation is reducing labor costs at ports - it can be delayed, but will eventually happen.
This is a great intro to the history of shipping containers. It was one of those topics that I thought would be really boring but its completely fascinating. Since reading the book I now look at every object and think about how it probably came in a shipping container from the other side of the world. https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-is-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-biggest-economic-social-political-issue-two-economies-ray-dalio
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
Sometimes technology and trade is intertwined. For a subset of the story a book I liked is “The Box”. Container shipping (new tech) was fought against by unionized dock workers. They later compromised by the shipping companies setting aside some cost savings for a pension.
Container shipping lowered the cost of shipping such that massive global trade became possible.
https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408
If US can be automated. So can China. So really it’s all intertwined.
Two more questions. When we switched from a agrarian society to industrial society. Was it peaceful? Why do we have Labor Day?
Last question, why is Trump in office?
Detroit, like NYC, used to be a large shipping and manufacturing center. Containerization destroyed the shipping industry in those towns. The book The Box explains a lot about what shipping used to be like and how containerization dropped the price of sending goods by up to 98%.
Once shipping became so cheap, there was no longer reason to keep manufacturing in the cities, so the plants moved first to the hinterlands (think suburbs, but further), to other regions (such as textile production moving first from the northern cities, first to non-union southern states and finally overseas), then it became clear that moving the whole factory became a cheap option.
What is happening to Detroit has been happening all along to the rest of the industrialized north-central to north-east USA. This part of America has been called "The Rust Belt" for more than 3 decades. The mess with Detroit has finally gotten so bad that the rest of the country can no longer ignore what is going on.
Jane Jacobs explained why regions became cities, and why they decline like this.
I think the war is only a small part of why London shrunk. After the war the population was still over 8 million. It wasn't until the 1980s that the population bottomed out at about 6.5 million. The main reason the city started to shrink after the war was that the government had a deliberate policy to shrink it. As you can read here, neighbourhoods were bulldozed, a green belt established and office buildings banned. To modern eyes this seems ridiculous, but at the time many were of the opinion that big cities were bad for the country, and forcibly spreading out the population and economy to smaller cities and towns was seen as the best way forward.
On top of all this, the docks closed because they weren't suitable for container ships (for more on that, see this book). At one time that was one of London's biggest industries, so it had a predictably negative effect on population.
Edit: Also, with the dismantling of the Empire, London went from being the capital of a quarter of the world's people and land to being the capital of a bankrupt, struggling nation of about 60 million. It took time for London to find its new role in the world, and until it did its population declined.
I am only halfway through it through but I am really enjoying, "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger" and I am not learning so much about the box or the power of standardization, which is I think the main driver of the book. Instead I am learning about maritime business, Longshoreman Unions in New York and what the United states means by "Free Trade".The book takes from perspective of a few businessmen, like Malcom McClean who started as an independent truck works his way to creating a truck fleet then eventually a fleet of international cargo ships. There are many peoples stories in here and the simple idea to standard shipping for cost savings, put countless out of work and created work for countless others. I am in the middle of the chapter on how this business strategy change our logistical strategying the Vietnam War and brought Japanese goods to America to economically for the first time.
I really liked "Catastrophe 1914", Before reading this I had only a paltry understanding of the world politics that led to the existence of the European forces that set the creation of the modern nation-state into action. WW1 was more than a war, it was the The World War. It saw the end of the horseback cavalry charge and the deployment of the machine gun. WW1 was about more than technologies, it was people trying to have what they thought was theirs and meeting resistance.
Edit - Amazon links
http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-1914-Europe-Goes-War/dp/0307597059
http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408
> Het boek gaat over de opkomst van de zeecontainer.
Ah, iets als dit? was een erg intressant boek, behalve die ongein over de "unions", vond ik wat langdradig.
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Marc Levinson
http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408/ref=la_B001ILOBWI_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397101651&sr=1-1
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.
One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Business Books of 2013 (chosen by guest critic Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft)
'The Box' by Marc Levinson is a fascinating read about the history of the ocean-going shipping container and how it changed the world as we know it.
If you get a chance, pick it up and give it a read. It will be well worth it.
(Also take a look at 'The Great A&P' by Levinson. It's his well-written history of the biggest American retail chain you've never heard of, the Walmart before there was Walmart.)
If you want to learn a lot about the world of containerization, read:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1373386174&sr=8-3&keywords=the+box
It really goes into how the shipping container industry came about. It is a fascinating read.
If anyone else finds this area as fascinating as I do, I would strongly recommend Marc Levinson's excellent book: The Box. It's a well-written, comprehensive history of the shipping container and it's unbelievably massive impact on the world economy. As you might expect, everything in this video is covered in much greater depth in the book. I would bet the video was made by someone who read The Box, found it interested, and wanted to repeat what they'd just learned to a wider audience.
I benefited from networking with students during uni:
Note that if you go into interactions with the goal of "networking", you're going to fuck it up and come off as waaaaaayyyy too transactional. Go to have interesting conversations and learn what brings people joy. Go to make acquaintances and maybe friends. Go to see who you can help (though be wary of making commitments when you're already busy).
The book The Box is an well written story of the container industry and it covers Malcolm McLean in detail.
I think one of the most interesting question in history is why the romans did not have an industrial revolution. Better trade is one of the reasons given for the industrial revolution. So this paper puts the problem in even starker terms. If the med was that good at trading for that long what took so long?
Try shipping something to China … jebus
Interestingly containerized shipping was largely invented to take advantage of all the empty ships returning from east asia to the US during the Vietnam war.
http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2
Nothing about the work itself was really all that interesting - we wrote pretty bog standard fleet management, revenue management, and data warehousing software. I do basically the same things now, but for the rental car industry, there are a lot of parallels. What was interesting about this job specifically was learning the history and seeing how much work goes into managing a fleet of millions of containers, which we produced in-house for quality control purposes. It wasn't something I'd ever really thought about before.
I always enjoy learning more about stuff that's normally taken for granted - without intermodal shipping, we wouldn't have the global economy. This book was really eye opening. Malcolm McLean was one of the biggest innovators in the history of the transportation industry.
There's a book about the rise of containerized shipping:
https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408
Yup, looked up the train, and round it here.
Also, if you are in logistics/supply chain, The Box is great beach reading. It's a very fascinating history of the shipping container and how it has impacted our world.
/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.
The following is taken from it:
History
> when have we ever increased our population by billions within decades?
Increased population means increased markets, more people producing but also more desires to satisfy.
> worldwide production per worker is also exploding do to automation.
This is a good thing. This is the foundation of economic progress.
> These factors are unprecedented.
Every generation says this. It's always "different this time".
> Take trucking... It is a low skilled job.
Your "low-skill job" didn't exist three hundred years ago (when people were running around smashing mechanical looms and making the same arguments about the destruction of society because clearly society stops functioning when we can produce cheaper textiles right?). Hell, how many people could pilot a 12+ tonne combustion engine driven vehicle travelling 100 km/h one hundred years ago?
You don't realise how quickly people forget and accept skills as normal, and then delegate them to low-skill! Fifty years ago the smartest investment an independent girl could make was to take typing school so she could operate a typewriter and be a secretary - nowadays kids grow up with an iPhone in their cot.
> It can easily be automated
And it SHOULD because it will make EVERYTHING cheaper. Why do you want things to be expensive? There will always be some losers from an economic change, but why do you think they are more important than the 99.99% of humanity which will benefit?
You should read the following book: https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408
It is a fascinating glimpse into how this economic world you take for granted came into being. 100 years ago, you see, you know how transport worked? People loaded ships by hand. Crates, barrels, bags, everything was carried by hand and loaded into small ships. Ships spent the majority of their time in docks, transport costs were enormous. Containerised shipping slashed transit times and prices.
You know what people did? Dockworkers fought tooth and nail to prevent it. Your whole trucking industry only came into being because they didn't succeed. And everyone in the whole world benefitted, because everything got cheaper.
Economies are complex. People can and will adapt. Some people don't pay attention and adapt too slowly. Bad luck to them. You will not make anything better or save anybody by trying to stop change to save them from themselves.
Malcolm McLean is one of those guys like Norman Borlaug that absolutely revolutionized the modern world but that don't get the wider recognition that they deserve.
Great book about the container revolution and Mclean:
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
I have a container in my side yard that I use as a shed. It made a fairly large Lull lift work hard to get it in place and in this image they look like toys!
I'm facinated by the container industry, The Box is a great book about it if you are interested.
Here are some books I was able to dig up myself, are they any good?
A Practical Guide to Transportation and Logistics
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
How To Become A Successful Freight Broker: My Journey from Fast Food Manager to Freight Broker
http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408
I'm a chapter in. Good book.
Barbarians at the Gate
The Box
And obviously The Big Short
Ta vision de l'échiquier politique est complètement ridicule. Franchement, la droite à l'extrême droite... Va en Autriche, en Grèce, en Afrique du Sud, au Pérou, au Danemark, tu vas voir ce que c'est un échiquier large... L'échiquier politique québécois est malheureusement peut-être? Très très standard.
Ton argument sur PKP maintenant, je n'ai qu'une suggestion à te faire, la lecture de ce livre:
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408
Tu veras comment une simple idée peu complètement démanteler des syndicats les plus puissants du monde. Comment à certain moment, des révolutions dans certaines industries viennent complètement changer les règles du jeu pour les employés. Je ne dirais pas que la situation est aussi pire dans l'industrie des médias, mais avec les journaux ouverts, les médias sociaux et les blogues les règles du jeu ne sont plus les mêmes ici. PKP est un visionnaire qui a d'ailleurs compris ces phénomènes émergents dans les années 2000. Je ne vais pas aller plus loin la-dedans, mais voilà... Il faut avoir une certaine profondeur pour comprendre tout cela, bonne chance.