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02/17/2014

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Vernon L. Smith


In public lectures years ago on Globalization, I used the proposition: “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will,” attributing it erroneously, as have many others, to Bastiat.
For a correction, see
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1678&Itemid=281
The form of the proposition affirms the idea that although trade may be peace-enabling, trade is not a sufficient condition to prevent armed conflict. The absence of trade invites hostility, but the existence of trade yields conditions that might promote peace or might not. I recall that people would sometimes tell me that the proposition did not hold; e.g., that the European countries were trading with each other prior to World War I. This form of misinterpretation seems quite common, even natural, because I think there is an urge to find policies that are unambiguously instrumental—sufficient—in producing the results intended, such as human betterment. People want propositions like that of Robert Frost: "Good fences make good neighbors."
We harbor the hope that the set of such policies is not empty.

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Here's a link to my past blogging (and discussions involving me) at: New APPS.

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