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"