Cato’s Dan Ikenson eloquently explains why we trade. A slice:
If two people focusing their efforts on the tasks they do best and exchanging their daily surpluses enables both to consume more or better quality output, then it should readily follow that four people or eight or eighty or eight million participating in this cooperative economic relationship can lead to much higher volumes of output (wealth) and much greater consumption and savings (higher living standards). This is the purpose of exchange. It enables us to specialize. And when there are more participants in the market (more with whom to exchange) there is greater scope for more refined levels of specialization. That means greater opportunities to match individuals’ precise skills and faculties (or to cultivate then match those precise skills and faculties) with increasingly specialized tasks and professions created in response to the increasingly refined demands of societies as they produce even greater wealth and higher living standards.
George Leef documents a government assault on freedom of expression. (We should all take more to heart, and live by the proud warning, “Don’t tread on me.”)
Michael Greve, a GMU colleague over in the law school, asks how our politics have become so insane.
Daniel Bier examines the causes of recent violence in Baltimore.
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