Heroes of Capitalism: The Humble Shipping Container

Many people hardly appreciate on the role played by the advances in technology in shaping social progress. Think the discovery of fire which initially allowed humans to cook, obtain warmth and protection. Fire eventually became important part of production. 

Other milestone innovative technologies such as the Gutenberg printing press, the steam engine and today’s internet has dramatically transformed people’s lifestyle.

For the majority, technology advances “just happens”, they hardly have an inkling of how these things take place.

There is one significantly underappreciated hero of global trade: the shipping container

The Economist explains: (hat tip Prof Mark Perry)

THE humble shipping container is a powerful antidote to economic pessimism and fears of slowing innovation. Although only a simple metal box, it has transformed global trade. In fact, new research suggests that the container has been more of a driver of globalisation than all trade agreements in the past 50 years taken together.

Containerisation is a testament to the power of process innovation. In the 1950s the world’s ports still did business much as they had for centuries. When ships moored, hordes of longshoremen unloaded “break bulk” cargo crammed into the hold. They then squeezed outbound cargo in as efficiently as possible in a game of maritime Tetris. The process was expensive and slow; most ships spent much more time tied up than plying the seas. And theft was rampant: a dock worker was said to earn “$20 a day and all the Scotch you could carry home.”

Containerisation changed everything. It was the brainchild of Malcom McLean, an American trucking magnate. He reckoned that big savings could be had by packing goods in uniform containers that could easily be moved between lorry and ship. When he tallied the costs from the inaugural journey of his first prototype container ship in 1956, he found that they came in at just $0.16 per tonne to load—compared with $5.83 per tonne for loose cargo on a standard ship. Containerisation quickly conquered the world: between 1966 and 1983 the share of countries with container ports rose from about 1% to nearly 90%, coinciding with a take-off in global trade (see chart).

The container’s transformative power seems obvious, but it is “impossible to quantify”, in the words of Marc Levinson, author of a history of “the box” (and a former journalist at The Economist). Indeed, containerisation could merely have been a response to tumbling tariffs. It coincided with radical reductions in global trade barriers, the result of European integration and the work of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Read the rest here.

It is unfortunate that media and politics has successfully implanted on the public of the false importance of the short term or temporary visible gains of specific personalities or groups, such that "heroes" are characterized by victors of zero-sum activities, particularly in sports, the celebrity gossip culture and in politics.

Yet the real heroes are those inventions or ideas that ingloriously radicalized improvements on the way we live over the long run.

Quote of the Day: Business People are the True Public Servants

A free and prosperous society should marvel at the accomplishments of its businessmen and businesswomen. These are true public servants, people who endeavor at great personal sacrifice to drive history forward and grant the human race a greater degree of material prosperity tomorrow than they have today. These are the people who really keep hope alive.

This is from Jeffrey A. Tucker at the Laissez Faire Books on political scapegoating of the entrepreneurs

Quote of the Day: The True Job Creators

Citing the success of Apple, libertarian author Robert Ringer points out that the genuine source of productive job creation, that leads to economic prosperity, comes from entrepreneurs.

Mr. Ringer writes,

Apple’s ingenuity and marketing skills are so good that its sales in China not only are skyrocketing, but playing a major role in its meteoric growth. Imagine — a U.S. company so good at what it does that even the Chinese are rushing to buy its products.

How could Apple accomplish such amazing feats without a government bailout or government “investment” in its technology? Because it had an entrepreneur at the helm who had the creativity, marketing savvy, personal ambition, and drive to bring the company back from the dead. No other help needed, thank you.

It is more than just a bit ironic that Steve Jobs’ last name is a testament to how entrepreneurs, when left to their own devices, are the true job creators. It also highlights the arrogance of politicians, particularly those who have never created or marketed anything, who believe they somehow have the ability — let alone the right — to take money from private citizens and “invest” it in technologies of their choosing.

Unfortunately the public does not recognize the true heroes, and at worst, have been bedazzled by the voodoo of politics.

Why Do People have Faith in Politicians?

Professor Don Boudreaux is puzzled and saddened by people’s unwavering faith in reprobate politicians,

Successful politicians – and particularly those who are successful on national stages – are, with exceptions too few to matter, master con artists.

Whatever is the reason why so many grown people respect holders of political office is, as it has always been, beyond my comprehension. I just don’t get it. Practitioners of no other profession are accorded more honor, respect, and (most importantly) power while at the same time being held to such low standards of ethical behavior. Actions that, when committed by the family dog, properly elicit scolding or muzzling or even eviction from the premises are, when committed by an elected official, greeted with oohs, aahhs, applause, and re-election to powerful office.

I share the same frustrations too.

Thanks to the principles of liberty, I have been enlightened that people who mattered most are those who put to risks their personal savings and capital and commit tremendous efforts to serve the consumers. Such people represent genuine public service.

Yet these wealth generating class of people are often unfairly painted as immoral or unethical by politicians, by their lackeys and their media mouthpieces.

Moreover, there has been little realization that while there will always be crooked people, corrupt and perverted behaviour are often an offshoot to arbitrary laws, excessive interventionism and burdensome taxes. Many unscrupulous actions are consequences of stifling regulations. And these have been the primary reasons for the proliferation of informal economies or black markets.

And in contrast, politicians who live by the forcible appropriation of people’s efforts, have ironically, been portrayed as having the moral high ground over the productive economic class.

Many don’t understand that the precept of “it is not what you know but who you know” has been grounded on the politicization of the marketplace. Where entrepreneurs, business people and corporate managers have been frequently harassed or intimidated by onerous regulatory and tax requirements, political “connections” become a byword for the protection of one’s properties and the facilitation one’s economic interests.

And analogous to Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages develop personal attachments with their captors, the populace yield or surrender to the “realities” of interventionism. Thus, the popularity of those who possess social and political control over others—or the politicians and the political class because of the unwarranted dependency relationship built from oppressive politics.

Of course the indoctrination factor through mass media, and the state captured private (crony) institutions have been party to the promotion of interventionism, the latter serves as a reason for the existence of revolving door relationships with crony institutions.

In the Philippines many aspire to be lawyers, that’s because lawyers are perceived to be a heartbeat away from politics. And politics has been seen by many, if not most, as a paragon of public service and career success which is entirely a popular delusion.

People hardly understand the system of ethics from which democratic politics operates on.

Basically, in arguing for the protection of society’s welfare, politicians take away people’s freedom, which is used as basis for the second step, the arrogation of people’s property. Then, the state through incumbent political leaders redistributes plundered resources to their wards and gives some of the plundered resources back to the taxpayers (e.g. welfare, public infrastructures) and claim the moral high ground of being ‘compassionate’. Yet most of such actions have been meant at securing votes to keep them in office.

I am reminded by the pungent Bennett Cerf quote in Nathaniel Branden’s book Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand

You have to throw welfare programs at people — like throwing meat to a pack of wolves — even if the programs don't accomplish their alleged purpose and even if they're morally wrong.

And of course, the rest of the taxed resources are kept for themselves in the form of salaries, perks, perquisites and other benefits (such as junkets), not to mention income from under the table transactions.

People hardly realize too that the political office have been magnet to people with sinister motivations. The great Friedrich von Hayek said the worst people usually get to the top of the political world.

Writes Doug French at the Mises Blog, (bold emphasis mine)

F.A. Hayek famously argued in The Road to Serfdom, that in politics, the worst get on top, and outlined three reasons this is so. First, Hayek makes the point that people of higher intelligence have different tastes and views. So, as Hayek writes, “we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive instincts prevail,” to have uniformity of opinion.

Second, those on top must “gain the support of the docile and gullible,” who are ready to accept whatever values and ideology is drummed into them. Totalitarians depend upon those who are guided by their passions and emotions rather than by critical thinking.

Finally, leaders don’t promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an “us” against “them” program.

“Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things,” Hayek explains. “The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”

The bottom line is that ignorance, indoctrination, propaganda, the belief in the politics of heaven (abundance) on earth (scarcity), the seduction of easy life from political redistribution, dependency on political relations as means to preserve one’s property, the popularity of social control or political power, traditionalism, peer pressures, and the Stockholm syndrome applied to political relations, among many others more, may have contributed to people’s undeserving faith in politicians.

Quote of the Day: The Key Thing Poor Countries Should Do

In a eulogy to Sir John James Cowperthwaite, a British civil servant and the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971, the quebecoislibre.org wrote (hat tip Bob Wenzel)

Asked what is the key thing poor countries should do, Cowperthwaite once remarked: "They should abolish the Office of National Statistics." In Hong Kong, he refused to collect all but the most superficial statistics, believing that statistics were dangerous: they would led the state to to fiddle about remedying perceived ills, simultaneously hindering the ability of the market economy to work. This caused consternation in Whitehall: a delegation of civil servants were sent to Hong Kong to find out why employment statistics were not being collected; Cowperthwaite literally sent them home on the next plane back.

Cowperthwaite's frugality with taxpayers' money extended to himself. He was offered funds from the Hong Kong Executive to do a much needed upgrade to his official residence, but refused pointing out that since others in Hong Kong did not receive that sort of benefit, he did not see why he should.

Cowperthwaite's hands off approach, and rejection of the in vogue economic theory, meant he was in daily battle against Whitehall and Westminster. The British government insisted on higher income tax in Singapore; when they told Hong Kong to do the same, Cowperthwaite refused. He was an opponent of giving special benefits to business: when a group of businessmen asked him to provide funds for tunnel across Hong Kong harbour, he argued that if it made economic sense, the private sector would come in and pay for it. It was built privately. His economic instincts were revealed in his first speech as Financial Secretary: "In the long run, the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralised decisions of a government, and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster."

Mr. Cowperthwaite’s contribution deserves even more credit. According to the Guardian

His example inspired the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and was a key influence in China's economic liberalisation after the demise of Mao Zedong.

I add to my list of underrated and unsung heroes of capitalism Sir John James Cowperthwaite.

Celebrating Heroes of Capitalism: Apple's Steve Jobs

Apple's founder Steve Jobs passed away today at age 56.

Although I have not had the opportunity to patronize Apple's marvelous products such as the iPhone wireless handset, iPad tablet or iPod digital music player or MAC or Macintosh computers, I recognize Mr. Steve Job's immense and revolutionary contributions in bringing about transformative technology-based personalized connectivity through his magnificently consumer directed innovative ways.

As the Bloomberg aptly describes

Jobs proved that complex technologies could be designed into simple, beautiful products that people would find irresistible

For Mr. Jobs, the consumer was king. And because of this, Mr. Jobs, through Apple, has been reciprocally rewarded by the markets (see AAPL's chart here).

Mr. Jobs' personal net worth according to the same Bloomberg article was at least $6.7 billion as of September 6, mostly from his Disney (Pixar) stake [$4.4 billion] and from Apple [$2.1 billion].

The following video is a short tribute to Steve Jobs. [hat tip Russ Roberts]

Thank you Steve. RIP.