Nearly Two Centuries Have Passed since David Ricardo …

Almost two hundred years have passed since the publication of David Ricardo’s On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Ricardo instructs us to devote our limited resources toward the production of what we do best, as defined by our opportunity cost of production, and to then trade the resulting output for what we are relatively less capable of producing. This description of the passage quoted above, while correct, is incomplete, however. Ricardo’s words do more than prescribe a course of action. Much to the contrary, what they offer is a description of our individual behavior. Perhaps this explains why, during the past two centuries, no one has proposed a legitimate counterargument to comparative advantage as the basis for mutually beneficial exchange.