#trade

As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No- if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes- if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value, only man’s fight against suffering is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim – is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#self-esteem #suffering #trade #values #virtue

The trade deficit is the capital surplus and don't ever think of having a capital surplus as being a bad thing for our country. ↗

— Arthur Laffer

#bad thing #being #capital #country #deficit

And you can't have a prosperous economy when the government is way overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over regulating and restricting free trade. It just can't be done. ↗

— Arthur Laffer

#economy #free #free trade #government #just

The main concept is that of an international solidarity expressed in practice through worldwide division of labor: free trade is the principal point in the program of internationalism. ↗

— Christian Lous Lange

#division #expressed #free #free trade #international

One succeeds in obtaining an equivalent production at a lower price by improving the arts, trades and agriculture and by developing the physical and moral qualities of workers, farmers and craftsmen. ↗

— Antoine Lavoisier

#arts #craftsmen #developing #equivalent #farmers

Some of my friends who know me best say they wouldn't trade places with me for $1 million because of the pace I lead. ↗

— Loretta Lynn

#best #friends #i #know #lead

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity. ↗

— Jim Carrey

#days #exciting #good #good old days #i

I shall be an autocrat: that's my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's his. ↗

— Catherine II

#forgive #forgive me #give me #good #good lord

Tens of thousands of South Florida jobs are dependent on the trade and commerce that our ports provide, and we have to make sure that we spend our security dollars wisely. ↗

— Kendrick Meek

#dependent #dollars #florida #jobs #make

Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them. ↗

— C. J. Cherryh

#goods #information #moves #sit #them