[ExI] the "humble Conex" box (was Re: Sharpiegate)

[robot at ultimax.com]

Put those items in reverse order and you'll have their correct 
importance, Keith.

In the first edition of "Where To?" in 1950 Robert A Heinlein wrote 
something like "there is some device, new but seemingly humble, that 
will change the world.  We just don't know which."  At the time he 
thought it was the transistor, but by the time of the second edition in 
1965, he dismissed that as trivial forecast, but said the mystery device 
was still out there, unidentified.  RAH revisited his predictions one 
more time, in /Expanded Universe/ (1980).  RAH was almost on time in 
1950.  I think the "device" was the "humble shipping container" as Keith 
puts it.  For starters, the Conex box created modern China.

Remember the proverb that was attributed to Trotsky? "You may not be 
interested in War, but War is interested in you."  He was channeling 
Nietzsche, who said, "if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss 
will gaze back into you."  Well, container shipping is like that.  Sure 
you can more easily export your goods to the world, but that sword cuts 
both ways--the entire world can reach into your front door.

My late father Robt. Kennedy Jr. was third ass't engineer on the N.S. 
Savannah maiden voyage and ~5 yrs after. Regrettably, the most advanced 
break-bulk cargo ship in the world at the time she was designed, 1956, 
she was obsolete before she slipped down the ways to the water in 1960 
or so.  For Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container and built the 
first containership, the S.S. Ideal X in 1956. Ironic, that.

When the president of the longshoreman's union saw the S.S. Ideal X on 
her first sea trial with a load of boxes and was asked at dockside for 
his feelings about the event by a reporter, he replied "I'd like to sink 
that son of a b*tch".  Honest answer at any rate.  So much shrinkage 
went "poof" altering forever the most corrupt violent mafia-infested 
labor union in America.  (Which was McLean's real motive for inventing 
it.)

Later on, my old man left the Savannah and went to work for McLean 
himself, driving what was then the first true and biggest containership 
in the world, the S.S. Elizabethport.


K3

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 10:28:33 -0700, Keith Henson 
<hkeithhenson at gmail.com> replied to John Clark:
[snip]
> The only effective votes for Trump were in the states that went for
> him.  I doubt there are many on this list (if any) who live in such
> places.
> 
> Over 30 years ago, I asked (but could not answer then) the question of
> why economic downturns were associated with upsurges of far-right
> neo-Nazi activity.  The places where people voted for him were largely
> places where the economic activity has been hollowed out, jobs shipped
> out of the country.
> 
> Ultimately, you can blame this on the Harvard model of how to run a
> business, a SCOTUS decision, and the humble shipping container.
.                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^