locke & key head games volume 2 joe hill

In one case, the farmer spends only 900 pounds per year on consumable goods and “he grows every year a hundred pounds richer.” (SC 19) In another case, the farmer only spends 500 pounds per year. Locke contrasts three scenarios involving a farmer who sells 1000 pounds of commodities a year. If more consumable goods are imported than are exported, “our money must go out to pay them, and we grow poorer.” (SC 15) Locke says that England prospers in the first case, but not in the second. In the other case, England imports two million pounds of goods all of which it consumes.

In one case, England imports one million pounds of goods which it consumes and one million pounds of silver or gold coins. Locke writes that “… our growing rich or poor depends… only which is greater or less, our importation or exportation of consumable commodities.” (SC 15) He contrasts two cases in which England annually exports two million pounds of consumable goods. 3 In addition, we will see that Locke’s mercantilist view that international trade is a zero-sum game contravenes his own general recognition of the positive-sum character of all voluntary economic exchange.’ But he was not a mercantilist in the sense of taking a nation’s wealth to consist in the magnitude of its stock of silver and good. Locke was a mercantilist in the sense of favoring an excess of exports of consumable commodities over imports of consumable commodities. Rather, the wealth of a nation consists in the amount of the conveniences that are enjoyed by its inhabitants. My suggestion is that the first group of passages show that Locke subscribed to the view that exports of consumable goods should exceed imports while the second group of passages show that Locke subscribed to the view that ultimately the riches of a nation does not consist in its stock of silver or gold. Let’s look at some passages from “Some Considerations” that most support the claim that Locke was a mercantilist and then some passages in which Locke seems to distance himself from mercantilism.

But he was not a mercantilist in the sense of taking a nation’s wealth to consist in the magnitude of its stock of silver and good.” “Locke was a mercantilist in the sense of favoring an excess of exports of consumable commodities over imports of consumable commodities.

Locke & key head games volume 2 joe hill