It is worth pausing to consider the price humanity paid to build the global economy - a world where it is easier for two strangers to trade goods or ideas than to trade gunfire. The 20th century was not just markets unfolding on their own; as Keynes would remind us, it was Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and institutions carefully constructed to channel the energies of nations into commerce rather than conquest. It took two world wars and a Great Depression to transform humanity from empires and colonies into independent states with citizens who could exercise not only political rights but the economic right to buy and sell across borders.
No previous generations have had the globe as their canvas. We do.
The results were staggering. Global life expectancy more than doubled, rising from about 32 years in 1900 to over 73 today. Incomes grew eightfold. In the U.S., average life expectancy rose from 47 to nearly 80, while per capita income leapt more than tenfold. Never before had so many lived so long, so well. But, as Durkheim might caution, the very integration that reduced wars between nations also frayed bonds within them. A global market can deliver growth and alienation in the same breath, individuals within the same country feeling as though they have less to connect them with fellow citizens.
Still, the alternative is far worse. Poverty is the certainty of a village too small to specialize, where resources are fixed and choices narrow. Prosperity is the possibility of a world where your village spans continents. Montesquieu would remind us that interdependence also breeds fragility — shocks travel faster when we are connected — but fragility in abundance is better than security in scarcity. The decision to avoid relationships does buffer you from heartbreak but it also “protects” you from love.
Today, in response to Trump’s tariffs, more nations are exploring self-sufficiency. Jefferson prized that idea because it guarded liberty from foreign whims. But in a modern world, self-sufficiency is a booby prize. It ensures independence at the cost of affluence, protecting us from the world while also cutting us off from its possibilities. Jefferson’s farmers were self-sufficient but they were also really, really poor.
And there is something else at stake. Csikszentmihalyi would remind us that fortune is not just measured in dollars but in flow — in meaningful work, engagement, and creativity. A global economy multiplies not only customers but also careers, paths of purpose that exist only when the market is large enough to support them. To shrink that space is not only to shrink wealth but to shrink meaning.
Nations clutching at tariffs and trade barriers resemble old men reaching again for the teddy bear they clung to in their infancy. The great comedy of our time is that after sacrificing millions of lives to build a world of exchange, we may throw it away for the illusion of safety. If we do, the future will not only be poorer; it will be duller, smaller, and more predictable. And that, in the end, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.
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