YOU'RE SOAKING IN IT:

The Debt We Owe to Trade: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World by William J. Bernstein (Jeffrey Tucker, 10/11/08, Inside Catholic)

After finishing the book, I found myself thinking about its contents constantly. Its subject is so ubiquitous that it is hardly ever closely analyzed. The time period stretches from age to age; the geography covers the planet; and the items covered include spices, coffee, silk, pigs and pork, precious metals, oil, and, really, just about everything else. Bernstein demonstrates thousands of times that the world as we know it would be unrecognizable without trade, and shows that trade has shaped who we are in ways that none of us fully recognizes. The historical detail is amazing. The writing is scholarly but clear and fascinating on every page. [...]

The Bernstein book helps keep all the controversy about globalization in context. There is absolutely nothing new about globalization. Nothing. The progress of "globalization" has been on its current trajectory for the whole of recorded history. This trade has made the world ever more prosperous. And why? Because trade has permitted populations across the globe to cooperate to their mutual betterment. Without trade, the human population would shrink and most all of us would die. Even a slight curtailment of trade can bring on economic depression and dramatically shrink our standards of living.

It is one of the great failings of the human race that we tend to regard the wealth that surrounds us as a given, something that is just part of the world that will last forever and requires no work to acquire. Part of the reason we have this habit of mind is our general tendency to contemplate only what we experience in our lifetimes. But the wealth that surrounds us is the fruit of the whole of history, the accumulated capital of the human race from the whole of history. We are born into it, it grows while we live, and then we die. To help us appreciate the bigger picture requires careful education and study that broadens our mind.

This is precisely what Bernstein's book does. It takes us outside of the here and now and help us understand the big picture, and he does this by looking at the details of goods traded in lands far away in all times. The book is beautifully written and wonderfully interesting on every page. I can't recommend it enough.