The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

Modern vessels are fat beasts. Container ships running full tilt max out at just under twenty-nine miles per hour. Bulkers at half that. The fastest civilian ships we have are . . . passenger cruise liners, mostly because they are mostly empty space. No joy in refitting them to ship corn. Modern transoceanic container ships hold thousands of containers, more than half of which are packed to the gills with intermediate goods essential to the fabrication of pretty much all manufactured products. Those intermediate products are built by a workforce who only know how to produce one specific piece of each product, particularly at the lower-quality end of the scale. Smart countries can do less-smart work. A semiconductor fabrication facility that makes chips for server farms can also make them for automobiles or toys. The reverse is not true. Modern ports are few, far between, absolutely massive, and typically not colocated with the populations they serve. Modern cities are so large and their economies so specialized that they require regular access not just to a huge swath of territory, but to the entire globe.