Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan, and I'm Juan Dabalos. We are back with understanding capitalism. We're going to go

to lecture number five today, trade and comparative advantage. In this lecture, Professor Steele explains

the extension of the division of labor. So in the division of labor, different people are good at

making different things or offering different services, and so there's

an advantage to specializing, letting someone concentrate on the thing they're good at and trade with

someone else who does something different. You maybe make shoes really well, I make saddles

really well, someone else raises horses really well. Pretty soon we've got all the building blocks

of an economy. That's not

limited to within a nation. Some peoples and some nations are better at producing some goods

than their neighbors and other nations. And there can be cost savings and there can be quality

savings. So that is the strategy that Professor Steele discusses in this lecture. What I really appreciate about the lecture here is that, you know, like any good

economist, I think, Dr. Steele does a really good job of explaining free trade and the

advantages of free trade.

But he also highlights that, you know, I love to say this, that free trade is not a principle, meaning that it's,

it's not always, and in every circumstance, universally true, that free trade is good.

There's other considerations that you need to consider as a statesman would, and Dr. Steele

goes into it.

You know, there are some things, some industries that you need to protect in order to, because the country depends on them, for example, would be steel.

You know, a country needs to have a steel industry in order to protect itself.

You can't depend on other nations for it.

And I appreciate that Dr. Steele goes into that.

Right.

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