MONEY OR YOUR LIFE

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Chapter Six

TRADE AND MONEY

Let us go back and look at the purpose of trading in goods and services. We trade in order to increase the quality of our lives.

In the process we create wealth. Wealth is created by the exchange of goods and services in the market place and by no other means.

Reserves of oil deep under the North Sea have no value to anyone until oil is brought up and exchanged in the market place.

A beautiful voice is of no value to anyone until the owner uses it, gets trained to use it better and if the owner then chooses to use it for the pleasure of others he or she can expect a reward for so doing. Exchange has taken place and that is what trade is all about.

The quality of our lives in a modern civilised society has come to depend almost entirely upon the ease with which trade can occur.

Whether this is right or wrong is for you to decide.

My task is to show you how you can expedite increasing the quality of your life by removing the impediments to trade. And please bear in mind that there is no limit whatsoever to the increases which can occur in the exchange of services in the market place, with no threat at all to the needs of conservation.

Don't imagine that we have to become more mechanistic and more materialistic in order to improve the quality of our lives, the very opposite is true.

We need to increase and improve the services which human beings can offer for exchange in the market place and that has no limit.

We can even improve the quality of goods for exchange in the market place without in any way increasing their quantity. In fact we have all witnessed the possibility of reducing the bulk of goods as their quality improves. Compare the bulk of the road bridge over the Firth of Forth with the bulk of the original Forth Bridge. I think somebody said that small is beautiful.

The point I am trying to make is that we do not need to be reticent in our quest for improving the quality of our lives by increasing the creation of wealth. There is no virtue in poverty and to flourish and prosper is far better than being poor.

So let us outlaw anything which makes trade more difficult and thus impedes the creation of wealth.

Because the distribution of wealth has been a bone of contention in human affairs since the beginning of civilisation, it is no reason at all to suppose that there is no way to do it properly.

In fact it is very easy to get it right, once the basic principle of exchange is accepted and understood.

If I produce or create something of value for my fellow men, then I can expect to receive in return some reward for my endeavour, provided I make it available for their use or pleasure.

Anything I receive from my fellow men without offering them something of value in exchange, is either the receipt of charity or it is theft.

Very simple and very clear cut and very definite. Bear it in mind.

This concept of exchange is of vast importance when you realise that trading in the means of exchange contributes nothing to the creation of the wealth which is created by the exchange of goods and services.

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