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> The absolute cheapest (in fuel) way to move goods, responsible for essentially every advance in living in the last century. This is a very distorted view of
by lifeonlars 3y ago
> The absolute cheapest (in fuel) way to move goods, responsible for essentially every advance in living in the last century.
This is a very distorted view of technological and human progress.
A huge factor in improvements in global standards of human living over the last century has been improvements in health care: hygiene, vaccination, antibiotics, basic medication, birth control and health education.
Far from being dependent on either the profit motive or global trade, they are largely public goods, have overwhelmingly been provided outside of private enterprise, and do not in the main depend on goods being transported globally.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThe distribution of goods is vital to every part of that? Making it cheap enough to reach every citizen of Earth is what shipping containers have made possible.
- svnt 3y agoOnce a certain level of manufacturing competence is distributed throughout the world this need no longer exists. Information travels faster than freight.
- smolder 3y agoManufacturing of some goods still needs to be centralized to some degree because of the up front cost of tooling, e.g. extreme ultraviolet lithography machines and giant multi-megaton presses, among other things.
- lifeonlars 3y agoObviously every human activity is somehow related to 'the distribution of goods'. Are these healthcare advancements closely related to either private enterprise or modern globalized logistics? Clearly not, as in many cases they took place without either, due to local conditions. For around half the world these advances took place before shipping containers. Health education, hygiene and birth control generally rely on the transmission of information and ideas but not of goods. The other three have been successful, in at least some cases, as public goods, advanced outside of the private sector. In many other cases they have happened because of, not despite, local rather than globalized manufacturing and distribution.