We Got Too Accustomed to Peaceful Seas, Say Goodbye to The Global ‘Conveyor Belt’

Such intensively globalized supply chains are a somewhat recent invention. There once was a time where you could not buy tangerines in Minneapolis in January or receive South Korean face wash through free, next-day shipping.  Little, if anything, that we use or eat everyday did not spend some amount of time in a shipping container. “In 1956, the world was full of small manufacturers selling locally; by the end of the twentieth century, purely local markets for goods of any sort were few and far between,” wrote economist Marc Levinson in his seminal book “The Box.” It’s somewhat ahistorical that…