Editor's note: Ian Hodge is a regular columnist for Business Reform Magazine, the leading Christian business magazine with over 100,000 readers. Each issue of Business Reform features practical advice on operating successfully in business while glorifying God.
My commentary last week attracted some comment from readers who had difficulty with my views on free trade. I happen to think there are both economic and ethical issues tied up with this question.
First, it may come a surprise for some readers to find that I am not an American. I’m an Australian living in Australia where I work for Business Reform as well as run my own business. In addition, I use the internet to buy shirts from JC Penney, books and CDs from Amazon.com, and music from Allegro Music Online in Memphis. And when I visit the US I buy my Palm Pilot wherever I can get a good deal. All at prices below what I can buy at home.
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Since I pay for my goods with Aussie dollars, I know that people in America will have to buy Australian goods, since Aussie dollars are no good anywhere but in Australia. And if JC Penney or Amazon don't plan to spend my Aussie dollars in Australia because they prefer US dollars to spend at home, I know they'll use currency swaps to get their US dollars and someone who wants to spend in Australia will get the Aussie dollars – a tourist maybe, or a buyer of Aussie goods and services.
It’s true; my buying in the USA doesn't help Australian shirt manufacturers or booksellers. But it does help someone else in Australia. Who? I don't know. It depends on who ends up with my Aussie dollars. As for employment, I have not helped Australian shirt sellers or booksellers keep their jobs. But I've certainly helped American shirt sellers and booksellers keep their jobs. At the same time I have made it possible for workers in Australia to be employed in the areas wherever my Aussie dollars eventually get returned to the country.
This is what occurs under an unfettered system of free trade. I get to dispose of my property any way I choose. The alternative is for the government to control my transactions in some way (e.g. tariffs). But then I am no longer free to trade my possessions as I see fit, and we have moved from individual property rights to corporate property rights, otherwise known as socialism or communism.
I'm a free trade advocate because I believe in the principle of private property. To argue, as some do, that there should be free trade within the borders but unfree trade with foreigners, ignores some crucial issues. For example, you can’t have partial private ownership of property. It is indivisible.
The issue of property rights is a moral and ethical one. Our religious views are inherently tied up with our view of property. Christianity has a long history of support of private ownership of property, although there are some Christian groups who have in the past, as in the present, favored a common ownership system. The command "Thou shalt not steal" is difficult, if not impossible, to apply in a communal ownership arrangement, unless it is stealing from the state. But the tenor of Scripture views the prohibition against theft in the context of private ownership.
When it comes to doing business, either we are free to trade, to buy, to sell, and dispossess ourselves of our goods or our money on the basis of our own stewardship of the resources God has given us, or else we introduce the idea of the Nanny state who will make these decisions for us.
I just happen to believe that private ownership of property – and free trade as a result of this – is the right way for a system of government to operate, and that we should avoid all legislative programs that take this away from us. Then we all will be better off.
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