Profits and Free Exchange

[RS Davis]

[glow=red,2,300]Tracy A Ryan Wrote:[/glow]The human race is made up of a vast amount of differing people with differing talents and desires. This aspect of our nature is the facilitator of specialization and trade. Specialization and trade have been with us far longer than money. When groups traded items in the past they did so, on the theory that they wanted what they traded for more than what they gave up. Simple. Each group might have felt they got the advantage over the other, but obviously neither would have dealt if they didn’t value the new items more than the old. The differing values people put on trade goods and the differing products they have due to specialization mean trade will occur. As long as it is done freely and without coercion both sides gain. This is their profit. Profit assumes trade is made because both sides want to be better off. This "selfishness" is no more sinister than the motivations behind any other voluntary interaction.

- Rick