Monday, July 02, 2012

No One Should Ever Argue that Free Trade Does More Harm than Good

...still argue that humans should not interact with each other...to trade.  See Don Boudreaux's post What’s Central to the Case for Trade?

Trade comes naturally to children the first time they play together.  One child recognizes that the other child's toys could be enjoyable if only they were to gain access to the toys.  At first, the child follows a primitive notion and snatches the toy, until the parent (negating the need for years of game theoretic interaction) says "No, we share."  The children benefit from each others' toys without having to purchase the toys themselves.  They trade.  They gain.

9 comments:

Isabel said...

Trade is one of those things were both parties that trade will always gain something from it. I would not be smart no to trade, but it must be pointed out that one country can gain more than another one.

Jasmine Byrd said...

Trade is beneficial even for adults. The things will be more complex than toys but follow the saying "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" and you can greatly benefit from each other and the assets you each possess.

James Davies said...

Interesting thoughts on trade, I definitely used to trade my surplus baseball cards for Rookie cards when I could. But toddlers and babies tend to try and take what they want first. Think about how the other toddlers would react if mommy and daddy were not around to control the playground. Can you say toddler brawls? Obviously in everyone's best interest to not hoard and share personal resources.

Anonymous said...

This supports what has been discussed in class. Trade "makes everyone better off", because one is able to specialize in one product and trade instead of trying to produce everything that they need.

Unknown said...

I think the fact that children learn to trade without any education, shows that there is an innate knowledge that trade benefits everyone.

Ian Littlejohn said...

Without trade there is no gain. Trade with the world opens up so many doors for a country. Even if that means gaining more than another

Eid Alkhaldi said...

I believe that communication is needed to trade even though there exists some types of markets that don't need direct communcation between buyers and sellers, such as stock market. It is a little hard to achieve trade without communication even if we had much more advanced communication and in the real world, perfect equilibrium prices don't exist, therefore; buyers and sellers often need to negotiate prices.

Eid Alkhaldi said...

I believe that communication is needed to trade even though there exists some types of markets that don't need direct communcation between buyers and sellers, such as stock market. It is a little hard to achieve trade without communication even if we had much more advanced communication and in the real world, perfect equilibrium prices don't exist, therefore; buyers and sellers often need to negotiate prices.

Nick Goldman said...

Without effective communication then trade cannot happen.If trade does not happen then countries will be less off. If a country wants to be able to thrive then there must be interactions that allow for the best resources to be traded in order to make both parties to gain.