Source: EconLog
by Christopher Freiman
“You probably didn’t compete with anyone when you bought coffee at Starbucks this morning. You didn’t enter a zero-sum struggle when you paid your phone bill, purchased groceries and gas, or caught a movie. Instead, you took part in a series of mutually beneficial, voluntary transactions. You gave someone money and they gave you something you wanted more than the money. Everyone walked away better off. In the words of Adam Smith, ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ Competition, by contrast, rarely pops up in your day-to-day economic life.” (01/27/26)