As the trade routes became better known and technology improved, compare the knorr of the Vikings to the clipper ships on the tea run, it became profitable to ship 'down market' goods and eventually mass-market goods. One decided benefit to this process was a local crop failure no longer meant local starvation as was common previously.
Today, of course, everything is shipped everywhere.
I argue the economic hardship of the 1930s created a hiccup in a long standing trend. We're not at the end of an Era but, rather, entering a period when the international trade system is being subjected to feedback shocks such as rising fuel costs, relocation of product points of origination, and systematic financial shocks such as the fall in the US dollar. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
It has only been in the 20th century that a large portion of the population could earn enough to be able to purchase high value items such as automobiles. In the USA, post-WWII prosperity was built on higher wages for the working population. That is what is changing in the USA. The distribution of wealth has reverted back to levels not seen since 1929. Real income is declining for the great majority of families.
In their greed, political and economic elites in the USA have adopted policies which treat the entire USA as a disposable item of consumption from which they can extract the maximum wealth in the short term. They see their wealth as mobile, owing no national allegiance. But power is not so context free. Kuwait could not liberate itself from Saddam with its "Fund for the Future" alone. That required the military forces of the USA and Europe.
In what context will those elites represented by the Bush Administration enjoy the benefits of their wealth when they have succeeded in extracting all portable wealth from the USA and left a hollow shell behind? How will they protect that wealth? If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
