Reading: Chapter one of "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger"
Author: Marc Levinson

1. A section from this chapter I found particularly interesting was where Levinson talked about the just-in-time manufacturing technique.  Just-in-time manufacturing is when a supplier only makes the goods a customer wants as the customer needs them.  Only when the customer needs them is when the good is shipped and delivered on time.  Levinson explained that companies such as Toyota and Honda use this technique to reduce inventories which leads to immense savings because supply is constantly moving.  This made me think about how easy it is to ship things today.  It made me realize how much we rely on shipping and low transportation costs because of how much we buy things online and pre-order items that are then shipped to a later date.  Containers paved the way for the future by lowering transportation costs and proving that long distance transportation of goods is beneficial even with low cost goods.

2. Levinson sees the development of the shipping container to be a large contributing factor to the increase of globalization.  He says that shipping containers played a large role in connecting the global market because they allowed for cheap transportation of all goods, even inexpensive goods.  This greatly increased trade as producers could reach all parts of the world at a low transportation cost.  The competition that came with this increase in trade, held down the prices of goods creating relatively similar prices on goods throughout the world.

3. Overall, I see the entire global economy benefiting from the transformation of global transportation.  Producers were able to expand internationally and consumers benefited because of the emergence of trade.  Trade kept prices of goods low and allowed consumers to receive a larger variety of goods.  Small companies not looking to expand globally lost from this transformation of global transportation.  Their high prices could not compete with the low prices of goods coming into their community as a result of foreign trade.