Trade and machines, as much for good as for bad, act exactly in the same way.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, pages 118 to 122 (in French)
Mémorial bordelais, July 1st, 1846

In this article in response to an article in the Moniteur Industriel exposing the liberals as theoreticians who reason independently from reality, Frédéric Bastiat starts by laughing at those who write: “Is it not true that, if we managed to quadruple all our industries, we would not be ten times richer?” Then, accepting the hypothesis (which would be most welcome indeed), he exposes the method suggested by the Moniteur Industriel, which consists in robbing Peter to pay Paul. Thereafter, he exposes the sophism (that is still very much in use nowadays) consisting in treating trade as an exchange of blows, which had already been exposed by Richard Cobden, among others.

Eventually, he exposes the inconsistencies of the Moniteur Industriel presenting machines as something bad while using an example in which they are implemented as a complement to workers rather than a replacement of workers. It is then an opportunity to remind us that, if machines may indeed generate change in the structure of labour, they do not destroy employment on a macroeconomic basis and today’s quote indicates that this is also true when considering trade. This quote reminds me immediately of David Friedman and his machine to change corn into automobiles.