ALL living things that we know of co-operate in some
kind and to some degree. So far as we can see, nothing
that lives can live in and for itself alone. But man is
the only one who co-operates by exchanging, and he may be
distinguished from all the numberless tribes that with
him tenant the earth as the exchanging animal. . . .
Exchange is the great agency by which what I have called
the spontaneous or unconscious co-operation of men in the
production of wealth is brought about, and economic units
are welded into that social organism which is the Greater
Leviathan. To this economic body, this Greater Leviathan,
into which it builds the economic units, it is what the
nerves or perhaps the ganglions are to the individual
body. Or, to make use of another illustration, it is to
our material desires and powers of satisfying them what
the switchboard of a telegraph or telephone, or other
electric system, is to that system, a means by which
exertion of one kind in one place may be transmitted into
satisfaction of another kind in another place, and thus
the efforts of individual units be conjoined and
correlated so as to yield satisfactions in most useful
place and form, and to an amount enormously exceeding
what otherwise would be possible. — The Science
of Political Economy —
unabridged: Book III, Chapter 11, The Production of
Wealth: The Office of Exchange in Production •
unabridged
Chapter 9, The Office of Exchange in Production
MEN of different nations trade with each other for the
same reason that men of the same nation do —
because they find it profitable; because they thus obtain
what they want with less labor than they otherwise could.
— Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6:
Trade -
econlib -|- abridged
TRADE is not invasion. It does not involve aggression on
one side and resistance on the other, but mutual consent
and gratification. There cannot be a trade unless the
parties to it agree, any more than there can be a quarrel
unless the parties to it differ. England, we say, forced
trade with the outside world upon China and the United
States upon Japan. But, in both cases, what was done was
not to force the people to trade, but to force their
governments to let them. If the people had not wanted to
trade, the opening of the ports would have been useless.
— Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 6:
Trade -
econlib
TRADE does not require force. Free trade consists simply
in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and
sell.. It is protection that requires force, for it
consists in preventing people from doing what they want
to do. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter
6: Trade -
econlib -|- abridged
IF all the material things needed by man could be
produced equally well at all points on the earth's
surface, it might seem more convenient for man the
animal, but how would he have risen above the animal
level? As we see in the history of social development,
commerce has been and is the great civilizer and
educator. The seemingly infinite diversities in the
capacity of different parts of the earth's surface lead
to that exchange of productions which is the most
powerful agent in preventing isolation, in breaking down
prejudice, in increasing knowledge and widening thought.
These diversities of nature, which seemingly increase
with our knowledge of nature's powers, like the
diversities in the aptitudes of individuals and
communities, which similarly increase with social
development, call forth powers and give rise to pleasures
which could never arise had man been placed like an ox in
a boundless field of clover. The "international law of
God" which we fight with our tariffs — so
shortsighted are the selfish prejudices of men — is
the law which stimulates mental and moral progress; the
law to which civilization is due. —
Social Problems — Chapter 19: The First Great
Reform.
... go to "Gems from
George"