… is from page 1 of economist Christopher Meissner’s 2024 book, One from the Many: The Global Economy Since 1850:
Integration between countries is like a new technology. It has the capacity to give us more of what we want while using fewer resources.
DBx: Yes. In fact, all trade has this happy benefit. You acquire chicken for your dinner from the supermarket, rather than raise chickens yourself, because the time and effort you’d spend raising chickens is too costly to you. This principle holds if the supermarket is in the same Zip Code as you or in another Zip Code … or in another state … or in another country. You specialize at producing what you produce best and then trade the fruits of your efforts for the fruits of the efforts of countless other individuals, near and far. Trade is indeed very much akin to a technique that enables you to transform that which you produce into that which you wish to consume.
The machine pictured above turns the likes of corn, petroleum, lumber, and pharmaceutical products into the likes of automobiles, smartphones, clothing, and coffee. The cargo ship – that great tool of international trade – is so very marvelous that it turns almost anything that the people of one country produce into almost anything that those same people wish to consume.
It’s utterly mysterious to me why so many well-meaning people continue to insist that this technology is dark and dangerous. In reality, it’s stupendously marvelous, for it enables and encourages us all to be of use to us all.
