Fifty years ago a North Carolinian truck driver, Malcolm McLean, thought that there must be a more efficient way of transporting goods and components all over the world.
Back then, people would take their trucks down to the harbor. The boat would sit there for a week or so while the unionized work force slowly and steadily loaded every single piece of cargo on the boat. The reverse would happen in the destination harbor.
McLean thought, “What if I use wheel-less boxes and just put all the goods in the boxes and hoist them onto the trucks, drive down to the harbor, and then just put the unopened boxes on the ship?” In one night, McLean created modern container traffic. He reduced the cost of sending goods and components across the oceans by something like 97 percent.
It is possible for us to have a particular kind of computer, with components from all major continents on the planet, the clothes we wear, the food on our plates because of one man and his dream and a culture that did not try to stop him but instead encouraged his dreams and his visions.
And developing countries all around the world suddenly have use for their talent and their hard work—to produce what they can produce best, put it into containers, and send it somewhere else.
But technology is not enough. We also need freedom for new technology. Unless governments step out of the way and allow entrepreneurs to do their thing, none of this will happen. We know that, because there are places where modern technologies are not used because of regulations, corruption, and government intervention.
If you are sending one truckload of fruit from South Africa to Zimbabwe, it costs you more in time, bribes, fees to the government, and taxes than it would cost to send the same truckload of fruit from South Africa all the way to the United States.
If this were to happen today, it is probable that Unions and Government would stop such innovation. It would rob jobs...like President Obama said that ATMs rob Tellers of Jobs.
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