Trade (Crowding Out, Part 2)

Back before America was a superpower, and Britain ruled the seas, they also ruled the textile industry.

Before third world polyesters, before Southern textile mills, before Lowell Mill girls, there was textile manufacturing in Mother England. It took a special skill, a physical skill, that sort of roughed up your hands. Someone could tell you were a mill worker.

So anxious to protect their technology from those colonies (that was us), they refused to let mill workers travel out of the country.

But leave it to human ingenuity and clever imagination, one such person quit their job. His sponsors kept him healthy and oiled his hands, so that by the end of a year's time, you could no longer identify him as a mill worker.

Hence he was able to get out of the country, and get to young America. The technology for textile manufacturing stored in his photographic memory. I think he was a Scottish man. One person, and this begat the New England textile industry.

So what is the point here? That crowding out, which is sometimes referred to as government overspending crowding out private investment, also refers to risk.

The risk of allowing your expertise to escape to another country, you won't own it any more, you might lose your prowess. Did Britain go under? Nope. Trade expands all fortunes.

The anti-trade sentiment is also anti-risk. They forget that once it was America that was a less developed country. Remember that?