Liner shipping – a tragedy of the commons?

Another fascinating opinion piece from Splash24/7 guest columnist Andrew Craig-Bennett on the lunacy going on the deepsea liner trades and the misguided arguments for building bigger ships. One of the joys of reading Mr Craig-Bennett is his refusal to pull his punches: “They all thought, like the bankers 10 years ago, that the rules have changed, and that eternal verities ceased to apply just because of new technology – the computer and the grey box carrying Freight All Kinds. They were wrong. None of them have a clue.” There is a further inference to this article – shippers need to be careful what they wish for; the removal of the conference system took away much of the stability that had resided within liner shipping for nigh on a century.