The Humanity of Trade
Living without trade may be possible, writes Frank Chodorov, but it would hardly be living; at best it would be mere existence. Until the marketplace appears, men are reduced to getting by with what they can find in nature in the way of food and raiment; nothing more. But the will to live is not merely a craving for existence; it is rather an urge to reach out in all directions for a fuller enjoyment of life, and it is by trade that this inner drive achieves some measure of fulfillment. The greater the volume and fluidity of marketplace transactions the higher the wage level of Society; and, insofar as things and services make for happiness, the higher the wage level the greater the fund of happiness. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (3)
peter helbich
this is vienna austria
where it all bega. menger,mises.hayek etc
Published: June 13, 2007 9:42 AM
TLWP Sam
Well of course people trade for personal betterment but I s'pose it's a matter of tough luck since enough people are happy to trade in a way that will hurt others. The fact that crimes against humanities occur every now and then is a reminder that plenty of people are quite happy to profit regardless of what happens to others.
Published: June 14, 2007 1:33 AM
P.M.Lawrence
"Until the marketplace appears, men are reduced to getting by with what they can find in nature in the way of food and raiment; nothing more."
That isn't actually true, you know. The market merely allows a wider spread of gain, so that there don't have to be losers (I'm not talking about biassed markets, of course). But things like palace economies could and did organise value adding, it was just that they had to be carried - non-cash subsidised - by others who were diverted away from their own subsistence activities. Even in quite recent times monasteries were palace economies like that, and that structure let them survive the collapse of trade in the Dark Ages.
Of course, governments greatly prefer cash taxes, but you can see a description of this sort of thing at work in the Bible's description of how King Solomon organised the building of the Temple. He produced a great work without market activities, but the catch was that there was no net gain across the board, plus the people had to organise the workload rather than simply pay cash taxes and leave the rest to the market.
BTW, this is also a test - I seem to have been censored the other day.
Published: June 14, 2007 4:00 AM