Maybe I was projecting a smarter argument onto my economics textbooks than was actually there, but I always understood them a little differently: two people gain by trading apples for oranges when they value (not like) their trade goods in different ways. How much you value something depends on how much you like it, but also on other things too: how easily you could find or make your own without trading, how much you value something else that the thing makes possible, how much of the thing you already have, how uncertain your expected future preferences are, and so on.
I think this distinction dissolves the rest of the dialog. If you’re close to the apple orchards and I’m not, or you’re an expert apple farmer and I’m not, or you’ve invested capital in apple-growing machines and I haven’t, then you’ll have an easier time getting apples than I will and you won’t value them as much.
In this account, trade creates wealth indirectly, by incentivizing production and specialization. In a world where there weren’t any distinctions of value—where people genuinely didn’t care whether they had apples, or basketballs, or copies of Twilight—gains by trade wouldn’t be possible. I can’t picture a world like that, though; even replicators don’t seem like quite enough.
Maybe I was projecting a smarter argument onto my economics textbooks than was actually there, but I always understood them a little differently: two people gain by trading apples for oranges when they value (not like) their trade goods in different ways. How much you value something depends on how much you like it, but also on other things too: how easily you could find or make your own without trading, how much you value something else that the thing makes possible, how much of the thing you already have, how uncertain your expected future preferences are, and so on.
I think this distinction dissolves the rest of the dialog. If you’re close to the apple orchards and I’m not, or you’re an expert apple farmer and I’m not, or you’ve invested capital in apple-growing machines and I haven’t, then you’ll have an easier time getting apples than I will and you won’t value them as much.
In this account, trade creates wealth indirectly, by incentivizing production and specialization. In a world where there weren’t any distinctions of value—where people genuinely didn’t care whether they had apples, or basketballs, or copies of Twilight—gains by trade wouldn’t be possible. I can’t picture a world like that, though; even replicators don’t seem like quite enough.