ABSTRACT
Commerce has often been seen as a civilizing passion, a doux commerce that obviates the need for violence. Rather than bloodying each other fighting for a fixed amount of resources, rivals could each specialize in producing wanted goods and trade them for coveted goods the other held. Specialization in production rather than destruction would increase surplus and reduce production costs. Peace would vastly lower the cost and danger of protecting property and facilitate exchanges. In the world of comparative advantage that classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo imagined, the race to acquire ever more material goods would lead to cooperation as well as competition. The market would channel aggressive, individual militaristic urges to socially useful prosperity.
