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… is from page 129 of Tyler Cowen’s brilliant 2002 book, Creative Destruction [2]:
Trade, even when it supports choice and diverse achievement, homogenizes culture in the following sense: it gives individuals, regardless of their country, a similarly rich set of consumption opportunities. It makes countries or societies “commonly diverse,” as opposed to making them different from each other….
Cross-cultural trade does not eliminate differences altogether, but, rather, it liberates differences from the constraints of place.