This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 7th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown. In fact, we may all be a little bit protectionist.

It's a basic impulse according to Cato Senior

Fellow Dan Pearson, that the benefits of trade require a sort of multi-stage

thinking for us to reject those protectionist impulses. We spoke yesterday.

Well I think that we have kind of a fundamental protectionist bias. I'm not saying we're all protectionists, but our evolution

was such that in our groups of hunters and gatherers that our ancestors were in for tens of thousands of years,

they had to be self-sufficient.

And people who weren't self-sufficient didn't survive and so I think that very strong

concept of taking care of ourselves, taking care of the small group that worked its

way into our gene pool and we still live with that every day. I mean there are a couple of ways

you can acquire stuff and trade is the least problematic of those. Oh yes you know our ancestors of course they would have

constantly been under threat but if they ran into another group they would

always be wondering okay are these people just looking for sustenance like

we are or are they on the war path?

And until it was determined that these foreigners were safe, there was a great deal of hesitation

and suspicion.

Once there was enough trust to allow a discussion, then trade started to happen because the one group would have some

cowry shells that were very pretty that they had in excess and the other group would have some new arrowheads and trade would happen and

both sides would come out ahead and everyone in the group would understand that they

had come out ahead in that exchange. It was very tangible, unlike international

trade today, which takes place at a great distance and across borders that we can't see.

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