In the comments of this thread, we ended up discussing gloabalization. Not saying whether or not it's a bad thing, but it's certainly a thing that is. And in that respect, important to understand, so as to understand it's effects upon the world.

This blog post the epic story of container shipping seems very relavant. The basic claim: that ports were the bottleneck of global trade - changing cargo from one mode (ships/trucks/trains) to another being hugely labour intensive process. With the shipping container this is cheap and reliable.

What will happen if this process is extended further by say flying trucks ?