Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 138-139 of David Schmidtz’s and Jason Brennan’s 2010 book, A Brief History of Liberty (footnote deleted; emphasis original):

What sort of foreign policy goes with mercantilism? A feverish one, Plato might have said; and 2000 years later, Adam Smith, moral philosopher and Plato scholar would have agreed. If one believes that to buy foreign products is to be a loser in a zero-sum game, then one will want to acquire foreign products by some means other than paying for them. By the same token, if one believes in self-sufficiency as an economic ideal, then merely avoiding trade with neighboring countries will not be enough. One will want to acquire their land and their working populations, thereby moving closer to the ideal of national self-sufficiency. If one is a mercantilist, one begins to think of military might as a first resort, and of voluntary trade as a last resort. Mercantilists do not treat either game as mutually advantageous. They see trade – paying to import wanted goods – as a way of losing, and the military alternative as a way of making the other side lose.