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Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 173 of the hot-off-the-press – and excellent – murder mystery by Marshall Jevons [2]The Mystery of the Invisible Hand [3]:

If you want to speak of competition today, think of competition between brands and technologies that are global in their character – not between countries.  If it didn’t sound flippant, I would think of something as ‘Made on Earth’ rather than ‘Made in the USA’ of ‘Made in China.’

Yep.

Henry Spearman, the economist hero of the novel, spoke these words to an audience that he addressed at the fictional Monte Vista University in San Antonio.  Prof. Spearman is perhaps influenced by Cato’s Dan Ikenson [4] or by Nick Gillespie and the good folks at Reason.TV [5]  🙂

Of course, even if – contrary to fact today – some good (or, yes, service) could unambiguously and with legitimacy be said to be ‘made in America’ (or in some other particular locale on this globe), that fact would do absolutely nothing to create economic or moral legitimacy for policies that obstruct consumers’ freedom to spend their money as they see fit.  Yet it’s still important to understand that very few goods or services today are the products of inputs and human efforts that come exclusively (or even largely) from one particular country.

(“Marshall Jevons,” by the way, is the pen name for the team of Ken Elzinga and the late and much-missed Bill Breit.)

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