Furious Monopolists
3 June 2009
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
You argue that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's call for Beijing to raise the value of the yuan is a sop to trade lobbyists ("Geithner's China Pitch," June 3). Sad but spot-on. What Adam Smith wrote in 1776 about Great Britain is no less true in 2009 about America:
"To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interest of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it."
And any government official who dares to push for free trade can expect "personal insults" and even "real danger ... arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter 2, paragraph 43:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html#B.IV,%20Ch.2,%20Of%20Restraints%20upon%20the%20Importation%20from%20Foreign%20Countries
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
You argue that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's call for Beijing to raise the value of the yuan is a sop to trade lobbyists ("Geithner's China Pitch," June 3). Sad but spot-on. What Adam Smith wrote in 1776 about Great Britain is no less true in 2009 about America:
"To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interest of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it."
And any government official who dares to push for free trade can expect "personal insults" and even "real danger ... arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter 2, paragraph 43:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html#B.IV,%20Ch.2,%20Of%20Restraints%20upon%20the%20Importation%20from%20Foreign%20Countries
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday October 16, 2009 at 9:55am