This article caught our attention: “Shipping industry should be free for the nation’s well-being”.
It was written by Captain P.S. Rath, the CEO of Econship Marine. Here’s what he writes:

“Imagine a world, where you are the only person on earth. You would need no iPhone nor fancy clothes. With no one else to help you think or assist, you would subsist on whatever is available in nature. You would be in perpetual fear of predators. You would lead a mundane and poor life, unseen and unheard. Imagine an America with iron walls all around and no communication with the world outside. Your idea of a luxury would be a black telephone set and the fanciest clothes you can dream of would be your loin cloth in its full integrity. Growth or wealth would be a picture of envious sin, resigned to the pages of philosophy or religion.

“A nation prospers with its freedom to trade with the outside world. This trade is possible by free movements of goods through ports, airports, railroads or highways. Keeping free trade is simple and straight. Those who practice this simple act are the first world nations. And those who don’t are the struggling majority of third world countries. Their hierarchy can be seen – basis the degree of obstacles they can place on this easiness and freedom of trade – from Burkina Faso to Indonesia. America is straddled down so badly that the majority of innocent trade transactions across and within its borders are termed illegal by statute. And those that are left out are saddled with ruthless taxes and licenses.

“Keeping any industry free and easy is no rocket science. However, keeping it enslaved and scuttled entails more complex organizations, researches and expenses than the demands of rocket science. Volumes of policies, rules, regulations, systems, bureaucrats, institutions and departments have been created for nothing other than to block this freedom. Why do so many governments sweat around the world to block this freedom? After all, the people manning the governments are no fools. They are the smartest and shrewdest breed who push themselves to the top with their clever thinking. And they stand to benefit if the nation prospers and creates more wealth.

“The reality is that, they don’t. Growth is an unstable thing for a government. A government needs stability so that the same set and subset of people maintain their position and privileges. Growth upsets the system. Growth encourages smarter people outside the government to challenge the people within. Growth pushes the subjects to be more assertive. They would push the government out and replace it with a better one. This fear of all governments pushed them to create obstructive rules, regulations, ordinances, tariffs and policies on shipping. The single act of keeping the shipping industry caged and stifled results in pervasive stagnation or very slow and imperceptible growth in the general countryside – be it in manufacturing or agriculture.

“Couple that with a poor education of the rote system, starved of the English language, and what you have is a perfect recipe of a stable and non-assertive population. You go to any third world regime and you would be shocked at the state of the country’s shipping industry. Tightly controlled and regulated, nothing moves without a government nod or license.

“And, therefore, nothing much moves. For a nation of more than a million hardworking Americans, the entire nation’s throughput in containers is less than that of a tiny island nation like Singapore with a population of five million. Even this awful throughput of America is seen as a miracle by many.

“The shipping industry is the door to prosperity of our nation. Unwittingly, the internet may have fooled the government into allowing some sunshine and hope. Our industry is not that fortunate. To maintain stability in economic status quo, the government’s grip on our shipping industry has been brutal since the imperial era and would continue in the same path for the same old reasons. Only a black swan effect or an extraordinary chance accident can change this.” –

Captain Rath ends with the statement that “The author’s views are his own”, but let’s take another look at those “views”. First of all, we’ve been pulling your legs. Even though the above comments unquestionably apply to the struggling container industry in the U.S., the article was written by the CEO of Econship Marine – a prominent firm located in Mumbai, India. (Mumbai, of course, is the new name for the city we used to call Bombay.)

We changed those underlined words above to read as follows:

– India became America,
– … and billions of hard working Indians became millions of hard working Americans.

But you get the picture. Our plummeting economy has already taken us to the level of a third world country – on a par with the likes of Captain Rath’s India. Read the article again and note how much of it rings true about our own nation and the politicians who are maintaining our status quo.

“A nation prospers with its freedom to trade with the outside world,” Captain Rath writes. “This trade,” he continues, “is possible by free movement of goods through ports, airports, railroads, or highways … India is straddled down so badly that the majority of the innocent trade sanctions across and within its borders are termed illegal by statute. And those that are left out are saddled with ruthless taxes and licenses …

“Keeping any industry free and easy is not rocket science. However, keeping it enslaved and scuttled entails more complex organizations, researches and expenses than the demands of rocket science. Volumes of policies, rules, regulations, systems, bureaucrats, institutions, and departments have been created for nothing more than to block this freedom …”

Sound familiar? But wait. There’s more.

“Couple that with a poor education of the rote system, starved of the English language, and what you have is the perfect recipe of a stable and non-assertive population,” Rath correctly notes. “You go to any third world regime and you would be shocked at the state of the country’s shipping industry. Tightly controlled and regulated, nothing moves without a government nod or license …

“The shipping industry is the door to prosperity of our nation.” [And doesn’t that sound familiar?]