Quotation of the Day…

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… is from Alexander Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufacturers, which was submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives on December 5th, 1791:

To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted. Even things in themselves not positively advantageous, sometimes become so, by their tendency to provoke exertion. Every new scene, which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort.

DBx: Hamilton here identifies yet another good reason for economic freedom: Such freedom maximizes the possibilities for – and encourages – the use of human imagination and creativity at figuring out how to improve one’s (and one’s family’s) life by improving the lives of one’s fellow human beings. Creating new products or new and better ways of supplying existing products is excellent exercise for the human mind.

And if trade is free, the scope for applying this entrepreneurial creativity is larger than if trade isn’t free.