It is better to purchase from others what it would cost more to produce ourselves.

Frédéric Bastiat
Economic Sophisms First Series.

This Sophism is a review of the controversy between protectionnists with the mercantile system and the liberals advocating free-trade. One of the fundamental ideas that sticks out is the issue of coercion and the ethics (or non-ethics) there can be in imposing one’s views through politics.

The quote I note down is itself one of the fundamental idea of free-trade that derives from the importance of the division of labour and which is here opposed by Bastiat to what his opponents favour necessarily, namely that “it is better to make things ourselves even though it costs less to purchase them from others.”