Who Is We?

Who Is We?, mais uma excelente carta de Don Boudreaux:

More importantly, the locations and nationalities of various producers are irrelevant. You make your living by writing and talking about sports. The Kornheiser family truly doesn’t “make things.” You earn an income by specializing in what you do best, and you use that income to purchase from persons outside of your household all the many “things” that you consume. As a result, you’re quite prosperous.

What’s true for the plural pronoun “we” used to describe the Kornheiser household is no less true for the plural pronoun “we” used to describe America. We Americans do indeed buy lots of things from non-Americans – a fact that is no more worrying than is the fact that, as you might say, “we Kornheisers don’t make things any more and, instead, buy all of our things from non-Kornheisers.”

Uma família que se meta a fazer tudo o que consome, ou que invista para ter capacidade para tal, rapidamente empobrecerá e terá de se contentar por consumir menos. Isto aplica-se às tontices do costume sobre a balança comercial e sobre todo o tipo de "auto-suficiências".