Trading Places
Dealing with others requires fairness and perspective
Editor’s note: I am not an economist, but I am a keen student of human nature. And throughout history, humans have been motivated by commerce and money to make decisions that are at times rash, illogical, and inhuman.
“Up and running at always accelerating speeds over the past 140 years, the remorseless process of dehumanized moneymaking is the globalized economy believed these days to possess the power of divinity. The $73 trillion trading on the world’s computer screens is human energy and desire concentrated as lifeless abstraction, moving at the speed of light in a moral and intellectual vacuum, praying like Aristotle’s “Midas in the fable” for a miracle.”
— Lewis H. Lapham, 2019
The global trade war is on, although certainly not through any desire of CEOs of multinational companies, as near-daily shifts in tariff policy create market volatility driven by increased costs, confu…
