At least he’s not saying the opposite, like most journalists.
dearieme
Without Patisserie Valerie the world would be a less joyous place. (At least at the standard of its products a dozen years ago.)
Gamecock
‘the moral obligations of the commercial world’
Third party interference. Luke is a dick.
Pat
It may be obvious to us that business makes us richer. Sadly it is not obvious to many, particularly in academia and certain newspapers. Hence the case needs to be made. Repeatedly, loudly and often.
dearieme
I once told an undergraduate class “it’s trade that makes you rich”. Some of them looked stunned, as if nobody had ever said it before.
Diogenes
Has anyone tried telling Capt Potato this?
Edward Lud
dearieme, is it indelicate if I ask what your subject is? And if not, what is it?
BniC
Someone tried to make the point that we have child labour laws because evil capitalists used to put kids to work, really didn’t get it when I pointed out capitalism made society rich enough that parents could afford to not send their kids out to work in order to have food to eat
dearieme
@m’Lud, I was giving them a brief account of Comparative Advantage. Nowadays all the sciences are Applied Sciences except fundamental physics/cosmology and related stuff. So all scientists (save the physics fantasists) should have a small clue about economics. It’s amazingly hard to get the ideas into the skulls of some of them – their instinct is to think in terms of lumps of material (as in World Copper Reserves equal such and such, an immutable number). You also have to undo the tosh they learn from their schools, their computers, their pals, and their parents. If you want to see an undergraduate get really shouty just tell him something which he KNOWS to be untrue.
ANNRQ
Without business/trade the human population would number a few thousand at most; we’d be wearing grass skirts and we’d be wondering how many ant’s we could have for dinner.
Everything is the result of trade, whether in practical goods or in ideas.
Truism, perhaps?
At least he’s not saying the opposite, like most journalists.
Without Patisserie Valerie the world would be a less joyous place. (At least at the standard of its products a dozen years ago.)
‘the moral obligations of the commercial world’
Third party interference. Luke is a dick.
It may be obvious to us that business makes us richer. Sadly it is not obvious to many, particularly in academia and certain newspapers. Hence the case needs to be made. Repeatedly, loudly and often.
I once told an undergraduate class “it’s trade that makes you rich”. Some of them looked stunned, as if nobody had ever said it before.
Has anyone tried telling Capt Potato this?
dearieme, is it indelicate if I ask what your subject is? And if not, what is it?
Someone tried to make the point that we have child labour laws because evil capitalists used to put kids to work, really didn’t get it when I pointed out capitalism made society rich enough that parents could afford to not send their kids out to work in order to have food to eat
@m’Lud, I was giving them a brief account of Comparative Advantage. Nowadays all the sciences are Applied Sciences except fundamental physics/cosmology and related stuff. So all scientists (save the physics fantasists) should have a small clue about economics. It’s amazingly hard to get the ideas into the skulls of some of them – their instinct is to think in terms of lumps of material (as in World Copper Reserves equal such and such, an immutable number). You also have to undo the tosh they learn from their schools, their computers, their pals, and their parents. If you want to see an undergraduate get really shouty just tell him something which he KNOWS to be untrue.
Without business/trade the human population would number a few thousand at most; we’d be wearing grass skirts and we’d be wondering how many ant’s we could have for dinner.
Everything is the result of trade, whether in practical goods or in ideas.