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I always regarded free trade as far more important than all the other ambitious and often counter-productive strategies of global economic policy – for example the policies of 'co-ordinated growth' which led principally to inflation. Free trade provided a means not only for poorer countries to earn foreign currency and increase their peoples' standards of living. It was also a force for peace, freedom and political decentralization: peace, because economic links between nations reinforce mutual understanding with mutual interest; freedom, because trade between individuals bypasses the apparatus of the state and disperses power to customers not planners; political decentralization, because the size of the political unit is not dictated by the size of the market and vice versa. (en) |
