[linlithgowoil]

The more i think about it, the more i feel that modern economies are simply very complex 'things' whose sole funciton is to move objects 'things/people/money/liquids/etc.' from one place to another.

Anyone else think this?

Therefore, without efficient transportation, you have no modern economy.

[JonathanR]

You're not too far from the truth. The auto industry is pretty self serving. When you consider the percentage of earning capacity is expended on vehicular transport, even at a disposable income level. Then add to that the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure, a significant proportion of the GDP is transport related.

But, it's mostly about skills specialisation, and getting those specialised skills to the market place.

I often wonder how good a public transportation system would be, if we spent as much on it as we do on our personal vehicles.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('linlithgowoil', 'T')he more i think about it, the more i feel that modern economies are simply very complex 'things' whose sole funciton is to move objects 'things/people/money/liquids/etc.' from one place to another.

Anyone else think this?

Therefore, without efficient transportation, you have no modern economy.

[jaws]

Advanced economies have always been based on transportation. It's what always large-scale division of labor. The strength of the Roman Empire was built on commerce in the Mediteranean and over its roads. Holland built a world-spanning empire from sailship trade.

[rogerhb]

Yes, if commerce was all about moving bits and bytes between continents we would be rich as hell and starving to death.

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'Y')es, if commerce was all about moving bits and bytes between continents we would be rich as hell and starving to death.

[spudbuddy]

An interesting history of transportation, Wildwell.

What fascinates me now, is the way we used to move things around (basically pre-1950) and how well we did it.
A chapter in the book "The End of Oil" discusses how much more efficiently we could use that kind of transportation technology now, with improved fuel efficiency methods.

I believe the point is that we don't have to stop moving people and things around at all, just change the way we do it (and certainly the distances crossed.)

If one really studies the past 5 and a half decades, we can see how with each succeeding decade we ramped up the economic activity based on transportation...especially the speed at which distances could be crossed.
Of course...this was the handmaiden to globalization.

Transportation / globalized manufacture/ petrochemicals / agribusiness.
All these things follow a model of gigantism / economies of scale / agressive cost-cutting of labor / anti-eviromentalism / anti-democratic trans-national untaxed profit.

None of this can or will survive without cheap fuel. (especially cheap oil)

Yet people still will need to move around, and move goods around.

I believe retraction / conservation will become the new religion soon enough.
After all the noses are bitten off (in spite) I think folks will come around.
There will hardly be any choice.

[Drjay]

I read recently that in america our average consumer item travels 1500 miles to the consumer, in Canada it is substantially higher. If you factor in the distance that the items travel to be assembed together for a final product is produced I would imagine that the number goes even. Everything that we use is based largely upon transpot. Cut the spigot off and life as we now know it ceases to exist. I hope you have somewhere to plant a garden and enough food to last until it is mature.

[falser]

I'd say the US economy is 100% supporting the suburban lifestyle by going into debt. Everything produced, transported, and paid for by credit card, eventually ends up at a suburban home. Without real estate and debt there would be no US economy and no need to transport anything.

[Kingcoal]

It's a long chain that starts with raw materials, which then get transported to where labor is practically free, which then get transported to huge markets (USA for one), which then get distributed to consumers. The whole mess has one common denominator: cheap transport costs, in fact often so cheap as to be a negligible part of the costs. While this has done wonders for consumers with money, the ease with which labor can be exported to low cost regions has been devastating for many.

As oil goes through the roof, we might go back to pre oil times when transportation was very expensive. Most goods were made in the same countries where they were sold. “Imported” meant very expensive. If you could talk to someone in the business back then and tell them that in the year 2005 a toilet paper roll holder would log 1500 miles before being sold to a consumer, he would think you were crazy. Actually, it is crazy!

Manufacturers back then were located in cities where workers walked to work. Families were tight and people in general never ventured much further than about 10 miles from home. In my line of work, I think nothing of logging 1000 miles in one week via air travel. Boy are things going to be different in the future!

[bobcousins]

Universal Theory of Systems

All functions of a system are composed of two operations:

1. Transformation. Changing X into Y. e.g. raw material into goods.
2. Translation. Moving X from P1 to P2.

X and Y can be matter or information. In both cases energy is required to effect the operation.

[FairMaiden]

If you look at pre-industrial vs. post industrial economy - there wasn't alot of growth in the pre-industrial eras. You only saw growth when there was a major transportation infrastructure investment - the Romans building roads or the ships built for discovering land and/or new trade routes. You can't have trade w/o transportation. All of our jobs are somehow tied to the trading of goods - even if the gov'ts watching over/facilitating that!