James d. Gwartney

Concluding thoughts. What do you think about Leonard E. Read’s comments on this
reading?
Holders of political office are but reflections of the dominant leadership--good or bad--
among the electorate.
Horatio Bunce is a striking example of responsible citizenship. Were his kind to
multiply, we would see many new faces in public office; or, as in the case of Davy Crockett, a
new Crockett.

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357
For either the new faces or the new Crocketts, we must look to the Horatio in
ourselves!
Return to Element 3.1
"Not Yours To Give from the Life of Colonel David Crockett" by Edward S. Ellis, is used under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.

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358
Return to Element 3.4
Politics and Foreign Trade
Question for thought: Why do governments tax and restrict trade?
The case for free trade is overwhelming, both theoretically and empirically, when one
applies the concepts of opportunity costs and comparative advantage. Even if the people of a
country have an absolute advantage in producing everything, they still gain from foreign trade
because they cannot have a comparative advantage in producing everything.
Ample empirical evidence backs up the theoretical arguments in favor of free trade.
The more that countries permit international trade to direct their productive efforts into their
comparative advantages, the more they prosper relative to those that restrict trade. Despite this
evidence, almost no country has followed a policy of free trade. With rare, and typically short-
lived exceptions, governments reduce economic productivity and their citizens’ prosperity by
either taxing or imposing quotas on imports. Why? Answering that question is the purpose of
this essay.