Blog Assignmet" The Box

A) "Decades later, when enormous trailer trucks rule the highways and trains hauling nothing but stacks of boxes rumble through the night, it is hard to fathom just how much the container has changed the world. In 1956, China was not the world's workshop."

This passage clearly defines just how much of an influence on the world the shipping container had. Today, China has the second largest GDP in the world and is hugely involved in the exportation of goods to other countries. The fact that it was not always this huge and involved in global economics is a little unfathomable. This passage for me really accentuates how important this box was in revolutionizing the global market and the effect it had on different countries.

B) The author describes the development of the shipping container as almost a catalyst to the huge boom in globalization. By using this shipping container, costs for shipping went from being upwards of 10% or more of the cost of a good, to being nearly zero. This allowed companies to ship and market their goods in new markets that were previously unavailable to them. By doing this countries could trade with one another without bounds, creating a much more important global economy.

C) The main benefactors of this revolution were large companies that could utilize the shipping. By doing this they were able to even further their markets and bring in more revenue. On the other hand, smaller companies that didn't have the resources to be able to ship that many goods could not utilize the new resource, and therefore would fall behind. In short, there was a movement of small local companies to large corporations.