Someone made an interesting suggestion about the crisis in
Ukraine. The current push for sanctions
that doesn’t seem to be having any effect may not be the best way to go. The country is in a state of disunity. Making things worse doesn’t make things any
better.
In other words, sanctions are divisive. You don’t bring people together by pushing
them apart. What is needed is something
on which they can get together, not more things on which to disagree.
That is why the suggestion to open up free trade rather than
imposing sanctions makes so much sense.
First, of course, it gives everyone an interest in peace and solidarity. Trade makes profits. Sanctions make losses.
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| Cartoon, July 17, 1861. |
Second, people are less likely to feel the urge to secede
from a country or become an autonomous region if it’s going to cost them
money. The slave-holding states in the
U.S. didn’t secede until they thought slavery was in danger; the most logical
pro-slavery argument was economic, presented in David Christy’s Cotton is King in 1855.
Third, opening up free trade leads naturally to promoting
productive activity instead of suppressing it.
Fourth, promoting productive activity leads naturally to
working on ways to sustain it. This
means sweeping reforms in monetary and tax policy, for one thing. This is because the purpose of production is
consumption, so you not only have to figure out how to optimize productive
activity, but how people can consume as well.
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| People must own both labor and capital. |
In an advanced technological economy, this necessarily means
that people must become owners of capital as well as labor. This is the only way to bring consumption and
production into balance.
From there it’s a short step to restoring power to the
people, reform of the tax system, restoration of a money supply that is asset
backed and controlled by the private sector, instead of debt backed and
controlled by government, and limiting the State to its proper function.
Free trade doesn’t mean laissez faire, anything goes. It means people are free to participate in
production with both their labor and their capital, and to freely trade what
they produce for what others produce if they so choose.
#30#
