Feb

19

Here is an account of life aboard ship from the article "Slow Boat to China".

But merchant seamen are an odd group. They spend months at sea, away from their families, tending to what is essentially a giant diesel-powered truck … Mutterers and quiet drinkers, most of them — cordial, but with rich interior lives that I'm sure would have alarmed me if I'd known too much about them. At meals (I ate with the officers), the group had a focused energy and kept the talk to a minimum … there wasn't a lot of lingering at the table, spinning tales of the sea. Later, in the lounge, there was purposeful drinking. And then sleep, if you could without rolling out of bed with every pitch and yaw of the ship.

I had expected a certain glamour to the crew — a kind of a Foreign Legion vibe, men on the run from the law or themselves, Bogart types — but that really isn't what efficient international trade requires. What's needed to power and guide vessels like the Hanjin Miami are mechanics to keep the engine running, oilers to keep it oiled, and a master to download the appropriate GPS and weather information from the satellite."

"A ship the size of the Hanjin Miami can haul more than 7,000 containers … giant shoeboxes that can go pretty effortlessly from ship to railroad to truck trailer. Modern freight transport is the product of a flash of insight by an American trucking magnate named Malcom [sic] McLean, who devised a system for loading, unloading, and hauling standardized shipping containers in the 1950s. Until he came along, cargo had to be loaded and unloaded piece by piece. McLean streamlined the process, managed to cut almost 95 percent of the cost of overseas shipping, … and ushered in the biggest, widest economic boom in history."

"[W]hat started as a writer's retreat … became instead a front-row seat to the world's economic slump. America doesn't make; it buys. And when America stops buying, the whole system shuts down."


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2 Comments so far

  1. douglas roberts dimick on February 19, 2009 2:41 am

    Steve, thank you. In China, I am docking with the notion that a simple geometric equation (distance) explains how we have trended to our current state of market conditions and corresponding levels of valuation.

    In politics, one may study how distance correlates to efficiency and effectives of a polity. One may posit how, geographically, the further away the locality of a public servant (elected or appointed) from the electorate, the less productive is the governing process in terms of state-input-output relative to either, taxes or policies?

    Consider how most states must address budget deficit and surplus issues compared to the federal government. May not the same now be implied with most global and electronic market ecologies?

    Do American consumers see price correlations relative to Chinese producers?

    Until moving to and living in China, I did not, nor do I recall market input (e.g., environment, labor, and other regulatory aspects) presented in nonecometric formulations for consumer choice — granted, though, reflected in price action a la Wal-Mart-like distribution and marketing schemes.

    Yet those same market correlations are determinative in producer/distributor (or retailer) formulations. So how may one explain the “disconnect” whereby valuations appear to present technical not fundamental (or value, embodying social and economic considerations) pricing structures?

    My answer is distance.

    Your observations are unique in that you objectify that same phenomenon between points A and B. Relative market ecologies seem to so quantify, though, only relative to (not between) points A and B as being operative for price action. Thus social valuation occurring relative to transactional analysis is only quantified within that state (or context).

    Consider how markets quantify the human and social cost relative to a little girl here in China diagnosed last year with Leukemia… http://xiaodu2008.blogspot.com/.

    I continue to ponder the process that markets did so with an American boy who died from that disease at age 13, some 25 years ago in Maine.

    Who did it?

    A to B; birth to death – between is the voyage.

    Is it the captain or the quartermaster?

    dr

  2. Adam Kretschmann on February 19, 2009 9:59 pm

    Ken Smith also initiated one of the more lively debates here by positing that financial engineering had less value than producing real goods. Prescient is the word that comes to mind.

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