/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>3574316
>nah i smoked a blunt with my cousin
nice

>Does this trade benefit you, at the expense of your fellow countrymen?

that's called an externality. They can be solved in different ways, but generally pose a lot of complicated problems. The best known is probably environmental protection - or fireworks. Anyway, I honestly don't feel too confident talking about that topic, since I never bothered looking into it.

But, you're not solving anything by reducing trade to barter. All you do is complicating business transactions, and thereby increasing prices of goods - or making them completely unavailable in some cases. The czech republic certainly won't be the best place to buy swiss cheese, but might be one of the few countries willing to buy your wheel-mod for ships.

Additionally, keep in mind, that producing something in one place might not be as efficient or even economically feasible compared to another place. And that difference is perceived by us as price difference. Your average american citizen for instance is, much to the dismay of my compatriots, quite educated. Every year he spends in school the price of his labour increases, for his skill set and ability improve. A lot of things though do not need much skill, or education. Producing shoes for instance. It would not only be a waste to take someone who was educated in math for I don't know, 10 years, and put him in front of an assembly line, but also prohibitively expensive. Competing countries shoe would either still be on the market, or you'd just cut yourself off of cheap shoes, condemning especially the working class and poor people, to even greater poverty, because new shoes have just become a luxury good.

Pic related, think about what terrible world this child has to live in, to be this happy about new shoes.

Generally, the idea of national autarky has not only failed most times in history, but also trade barriers are what countries do to their enemies in times of war.