tangential recommendation: if you enjoy reading longform articles about logistics, check out Marc Levinson's book "The Box" about the history of the shipping c

tangential recommendation: if you enjoy reading longform articles about logistics, check out Marc Levinson's book "The Box" about the history of the shipping container. there's a bunch of interesting aspects: the shifting balance of power between unions and capital (breakbulk shipping is a lot more labour intensive, switching to containers permanently removes longshoremen jobs, longshoremen working conditions are frequently abysmal when capital gets the upper hand); regulation in the US artificially fixing prices that artificially prop-up one form of transport (e.g. rail) over another (intermodal sea + road); shipping companies forming cartels to fix prices; the engineering design and investment required in ships, cranes and trucks to support a particular design of container; the process of standardising containers for compatibility; different vested interests attempting to upgrade port infrastructure or to block it; which countries and ports were able to position themselves to benefit from the increasing adoption of the new container transport protocol, and which ones got left behind; the US army as an adopter of shipping containers & how winning a contract to ship supplies to the conflict in Vietnam created an opportunity to fill otherwise empty container ships with goods exported from Japan for the return leg back to the US. Also, the story of fortunes made and fortunes lost by Malcom Mclean.