Cold Chain

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The global supply chain that keeps perishable goods at controlled temperatures has revolutionised the food industry. It widened our choice of food and improved our nutrition. It enabled the rise of the supermarket. And that, in turn, transformed the labour market: less need for frequent shopping frees up women to work. As low-income countries get wealthier, fridges are among the first things people buy: in China, it took just a decade to get from a quarter of households having fridges to nearly nine in ten. Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Fully loaded shelves, Credit: Shutterstock)

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:13.8	Crazy, than a half dozen opium-smoking frogs.
0:19.1	That's how one observer described Guatemala's president, General Jorge Ubico.
0:26.0	In general, like to dress up as Napoleon Bonaparte, he may even have believed himself to be
0:31.6	Napoleon Bonaparte re-incarnate.
0:35.1	Like many 20th century Latin American dictators, Crazy General Ubico had a cozy relationship
0:41.4	with a united fruit company.
0:45.0	It became known as El Paul Poe, the octopus, because its tentacles reached everywhere.
0:52.2	Ubico passed a law forcing indigenous Guatemalans to work for landowners, which is to say,
0:58.7	the United Fruit Company.
1:00.6	The company owned most of Guatemala's arable land, and it left most of it lying phallow
1:06.3	just in case it might be needed in future.
1:09.5	The company claimed the land was worth next to nothing, so it shouldn't have to pay much
1:13.6	tax on it.
1:14.9	Ubico agreed.
1:17.1	But then Ubico was overthrown.
1:20.0	An idealistic young soldier, Hohobo Arbents, rose to power.
1:25.5	And he called El Paul Poe's bluff.
1:28.6	If the land was worth so little, the state would buy it and let peasants farm it.
1:34.2	The United Fruit Company didn't like this idea.
1:37.1	It lobbied the US government employing a PR agency to portray Arbents as a dangerous
1:43.0	communist.
	...

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