Trade is built into our human nature. We all want stuff we can’t have, and no one can produce everything. Even if all the raw materials and all the skills and all the knowledge was possessed, there isn’t enough time for a single (person, city, country) to produce enough to fill all desires.
So we trade to get what we want. This has been the case for all of human civilization and I am confident if you could peer into the earliest time periods the rocks sharpened during the Stone Age traveled far and wide as well. Trying to ban or artificially limit trade is like trying to limit the tides - you are battling against a decentralized force of human desire.
This is the same reason you can’t ban drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling - and on the positive side love, children, religion - both categories of which have been attempted by various governments in recent and distant times.
I like history because it shows us how stable we are as humans. The context changes but our desires and motivations do not.
So we trade to get what we want. This has been the case for all of human civilization and I am confident if you could peer into the earliest time periods the rocks sharpened during the Stone Age traveled far and wide as well. Trying to ban or artificially limit trade is like trying to limit the tides - you are battling against a decentralized force of human desire.
This is the same reason you can’t ban drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling - and on the positive side love, children, religion - both categories of which have been attempted by various governments in recent and distant times.
I like history because it shows us how stable we are as humans. The context changes but our desires and motivations do not.