FEE this month reprints Sarah Skwire’s good piece from 2017: “The Moral and Spiritual Blessings of Trade Among All Nations”:
“Free trade doesn’t just make us better off. It makes us better people.”
At PanAm Post this month, Maria Marty takes up the underlying collectivist premises of many anti-free-trade arguments: “La excusa colectivista para limitar el comercio.” Fun analogy in this excerpt:
“Apliquemos el argumento que los colectivistas utilizan para proteger las industrias nacionales en otros aspectos de nuestras vidas. Tomemos el aspecto romántico como ejemplo. El argumento se leería parecido a lo siguiente:
“No debemos permitir que nuestras mujeres y nuestros hombres formen pareja o contraigan matrimonio con extranjeros, porque dejarían a un sector de compatriotas con una oferta amorosa más limitada para satisfacer sus deseos y necesidades. Por este motivo, castigaremos a los desobedientes que pongan su interés personal por sobre la necesidad del grupo y elijan a un extranjero o extranjera por sobre un hombre o una mujer nacionales”.
¿Aceptaríamos los principios filosóficos mencionados arriba en este aspecto de nuestra vida?”
To which I add my own piece from 2016 — “Free Trade Makes You a Better Person”:
“Think of all the things that set people at each other’s throats — religious and political zealotry, tribalism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and the pig-headedness that humans are capable of for any number of reasons.
Those committed to the ethic of trade are committed to evaluating others in terms of their productive ability — not their skin color or political party. They are committed to respecting others as self-responsible agents — not to seeing them as the weaker sex or idolaters. They are committed to offering their personal best to the world and seeking the best that others have to offer — not to stubbornly ignoring or downplaying the achievements of individuals from other cultures.
Trade is not a cure-all. But it does motivate civilized behavior, and it gives us all an incentive to overlook or unlearn any irrational prejudices we may have.”
Related: “Friedrich Engels against liberal peace.” “Is commerce rendering war obsolete?”