The box that changed the world

The best economics programme I have seen for ages was narrated by a poet and billed as a science offering. The BBC’s Box That Changed Britain looked at how containerisation has enabled a huge increase in international trade.

Putting cargo into containers made the transport of cargo by sea far more efficient. Dock workers no longer had to handle large numbers of individual boxes or sacks.

As a result trade has become far cheaper. Evidently it often costs less to bring over consumer goods from Asia than to take them home from the local superstore.