George, Williams’ column provides an excellent reminder of how counterintuitive at first is the “economic way of thinking” (in the late Paul Heyne’s words). Very little is more counterintuitive, apparently, than the idea that voluntary trade increases wealth, but that understanding is why free-market economists opposed slavery. They advocated paying for the labor rather than coercing it with the whip and the gun. Taking something of value to someone ? be it labor, property, money ? destroys wealth, even if the nominal value of the thing seized remains the same or increases.
This understanding eluded Carlyle and others supporting “the beneficent whip” idea, it eludes socialists supporting coercive taxation and entitlement spending, and it also eludes John “Raise the Minimum Wage” Edwards and all those who think low-cost vendors like Wal-Mart exploit their workers with low wages voluntarily accepted.
