Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“Even when a line on a map separates two individuals, trade is still trade — that is, mutually beneficial cooperation. Whether the line separates towns, cities, counties, states, or countries, it does not matter. The transactions are win-win. We could do quite well without the categories of exports and imports. Adam Smith wisely said almost 250 years ago that the balance-of-trade doctrine was ‘absurd.’ In a sense, only two kinds of goods and services exist as far as I’m concerned: those that I produce and those that everyone else produces. That is true for you too. Countries don’t trade. Individual people do. Where governments don’t permit this, they should get out of the way. Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics, eloquently described trade in his pioneering work, Principles of Economics (1871, pp. 175ff).” (04/18/25)
https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2025/04/tgif-menger-on-trade.html