The last week has been exciting for me.
It’s been almost two months since the second surgery on my right leg. Though my stamina is still low and there are lingering pain issues, I’m once again walking around without a cane. To be perfectly honest with you, the experience has been intoxicating.
This will probably wear off. I will grow accustomed to walking, and eventually, I’ll take it for granted. Never again quite as much as those of you do who have never lost the capacity to run, but, without a doubt, walking around will once again feel ordinary to me. So I’m enjoying this feeling while it lasts. I’m grateful for and loving every step I take these days.
My process of re-entering the world as a walking person has been largely about the humanizing and uplifting experience of trading.
Four days ago, I reactivated my gym membership and have visited twice. I’m sore everywhere, which has the unintended consequence of decreasing my sensitivity to issues specific to my right leg. It’s a tremendous relief to ache everywhere and, for moments, to imagine my whole body improving as opposed to my knee holding me back.
Three days ago, I went for a walk to Safeguard Storage where my wife and I keep books and seasonal clothes. After picking up my warmest winter coat, I went to the front office and paid up for the next month. As I left, the facility’s supervisor wished me well: “Have a great day, Mr. Cohen.” I walked over to my gym, a New York Sports Club, the one where I got into shape for my wedding in 2004 and where I rebuilt my right leg in 2009, and was greeted by a friendly young guy: “Have a great workout!” As I was leaving, a trainer nodded in my direction, smiled, and said, “Come back soon.” I paid a visit to Marino’s, my favorite local fishmonger: “Happy New Year! How’s your leg coming along. What can I get for you? Check out this magazine we were featured in. Have a great day!” And finally I stopped by a local grocer to pick up some oranges: “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
In the course of my days since, I’ve had the following experiences. The vendor through whom this site is hosted contacted me to make me aware of the fact that by migrating to a similar product, I could cut my monthly costs in half. In response to competition from Verizon, AT&T has reduced the cost of its iPhone Family Plan by at least $30 per month, without requiring me to sign a contract extension.
Two nights ago, I listed a camera lens for sale on craigslist. I sold it yesterday. Here is a dialogue snippet from my meeting with the stranger who bought my lens.
Buyer: “I’m thrilled that you kept this lens in such excellent condition. It looks brand new. Did you use it much?”
Me: “Yes, I used it quite a bit. But I know that eventually I’m going to want to buy new gear. I think of the condition of my current tools in terms of helping me offset future business costs. Being a good steward of my lenses is obviously in my best interests.”
Buyer: “Well, I thought your price was great based on the pictures of the lens you posted. But I was afraid that it wasn’t going to be as good in person. Thanks for being honest about it.”
Me: “I’m glad we’ve both won here.”
Buyer: “Contact me if you want to sell any of your other equipment before you list it.”
Me: “Sure. Have fun with your new lens.”
Today, after an early morning workout at the gym, I visited an Asian grocer, bought baby bok choy for $1.29 per pound, packages of dried kumquats and bean thread noodles and shitake mushrooms imported from Taiwan, and a spiny winter melon. Then, I had brunch with my wife and a good friend at a new neighborhood restaurant/bar that makes an incredible hamburger and serves a bottomless cup of rich, smooth coffee. Our waitress was attentive and friendly. We ate and laughed for a couple of hours, paid our bill gladly, and returned to our homes. Not before stopping at a Meditteranean Deli and picking up an amazing variety of olives.
I’m struck by the fact that all of the trading experiences I’ve described here are normal. Normal and, of course, taken for granted.
Of course, food from halfway around the world is available to me for a few dollars at a grocer down the street from me. Of course, the restaurant will coordinate the logistics of securing ingredients and preparing them in a manner I’ll consider delicious at a price affordable to me and profitable to them. Of course.
Trading activities and opportunities are unremarkable to the vast majority of people who live in America, but they are also exemplary of the experiences without which our lives would be impoverished and miserable. And therefore they are far from being “nothing special.” In fact, underlying all of my recent experiences, each of which are trades of one sort or another, is something vitally special. Something we’re all relying upon every day of our lives, which far too many of us recklessly treat as automatic, like walking, but which (it is clear from history books and today’s newspaper headlines) people neglect at their own peril.
I’m referring to the operating principle that makes peace possible and is responsible for actual measurable progress in human longevity and prosperity.
This special something is the idea that all human relationships (not including parent/adult-child relationships, which I’m going to have to address separately at some point) should only consist of voluntary exchanges of value based on mutual consent.
If a relationship between two people features only the consent of one of them, then it is not peaceful. Whatever benefits might flow to the person (or group or government) who imposes the relationship are produced by holding hostage the other participant’s life and freedom or by enslaving him outright or by degrading his humanity (ie, using him as if he is a resource instead of a person).
If a relationship between two people involves a one-way transfer of values as opposed to a voluntary exchange of values, then it is not peaceful and there is no hope for actual, measurable progress. There can be no progress in a society of parasites, only a race toward the consumption of all available resources before reaching some kind of cannibalistic apocalypse. There is no impetus to create value in such a context. A parasite has no incentive to trade, to engage in an exchange of values.
Wealth is created only when people reasonably expect to experience profitable (ie, mutually beneficial) relationships, that is, when they are free to enter into trades of their own choosing (trading our labor and expertise and knowledge and property according to our own preferences and priorities), responsible for offering persuasive value propositions to those who have what they want (as I did when I sold my lens), free to make mistakes and adapt (we do this every day, some better than others), free to learn and experiment (as I did when I bought Taiwanese kumquats… so many… possibilities!).
A whole world of traders is bound to be peaceful and destined to achieve advances in every imaginable peaceful endeavor.
Measurable human progress is produced by the drive to innovate and reduce costs and maximize profits that the opportunity to trade unleashes. Measurable human misery is produced by the behavior of those driven to control and restrict and prohibit peaceful human actions, who seek to institutionalize violations of mutual consent, who work to establish legal exceptions to voluntary behavior.
Not a day goes by when you and I are not beneficiaries of living in a society in which mutual consent and voluntary trade are fundamentally accepted rules. But too many of us appear to be blinded by the extraordinary range of advantages, conveniences, and pleasantnesses these moral rules generate, blinded to the lethal risks posed by permitting governments to tamper with such basic moral premises. Too many of us are blinded, as well, by the glorious and heart-rending appeal of the impossible, the alluring political promises of free lunches.
Why do we celebrate the idea of people receiving something for nothing? What is a politician’s free lunch promise if not a way of pretending that the person (or group of people) who has labored to provide for, prepare, and serve that “lunch” should be treated as a slave and compensated accordingly. What are the people who cheer and endorse such promises thinking? Are they preoccupied with charitable intentions? What a delusion! If charity isn’t freely exercised, then it’s not charity at all, and pretending it is, and then legally enforcing that pretense, amounts to nothing more than mimicking the worst rationalizations of criminals.
Why aren’t more of us more keenly aware of and insistent upon extending the benefits of trade to as many aspects of life as possible? Why do we insist on mutual consent and voluntary trading in our personal experiences but vote to empower the government to violate those rules?
It’s never too late to think about and appreciate the things we take for granted— walking and trading.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I’ve been thinking about trade these days as well–particularly when I’m forced to buy shoddily-made Chinese imports for lack of any other options (the companies that once made good stuff have long since vanished). I find it sad that we export raw materials to China so that they can turn it into products which they then sell back to us. I think of all the oil and the carbon footprint involved in just shipping these things back and forth around the globe. We have the raw materials, a huge unemployed labor pool, and the demand for consumer goods. So why don’t we make and sell these products locally?
Yes it costs too much–and yet I wouldn’t want to compete with China on their level; I wouldn’t want to throw out decades of hard-won labor and environmental laws just so we can make inferior consumer crap. I don’t want this to be a race to the bottom. Rather, I want China to compete with us on our level. True “free trade” would involve a market in which we all play by the same rules. And that means equivalent labor and environmental laws (and equivalent enforcement of such laws). But we don’t have anything like that now; China operates by whatever rules they want and we’re utterly handicapped.
Meanwhile the obvious solution–tariffs–are not even debated as an option. Yes tariffs would raise the cost of goods. And that’s bad. But as the tariffs are steadily increased, it would eventually become cheaper to build things here again. That’s good–because that creates jobs and vastly reduces the inefficiencies involved in trans-oceanic deliveries. Moreover, we retain the moral high ground as tariffs are justified when their purpose is to right a wrong. When China decides to play fair, we can drop the tariffs accordingly.
Instead we are told to be even more productive and learn new skills and innovate. But since China doesn’t respect intellectual property rights, all that work is stolen and the incentive to take risks is lost. Large corporations, meanwhile, find it’s far easier to lobby than to innovate. And the recent Supreme Court decision in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” gives corporations unprecedented power to do so.
Eventually, oil will become so expensive that local economies will become the only way to operate. But in the meantime, I’ll be thinking of all the things I *can’t* buy as a result of unfair trade–quality merchandise that is built to last.