Part of the confusion here is over what the word “trade” means. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the proto-justification given that, “The point of trade is that sometimes people get different amounts of value from things, so they can get more value by trading them.” It’s just that, even in a society where everyone shares the same values, we get efficiency from specialization.
It seems like a further stipulation to refer to “specialization and transportation of resources” as “trade” if every party involved has the exact same values. Consider a colony of ants. There are various types of worker ants, and the queen ant, and each uses special behavioral tools to optimize their particular niche within the colony. Still, it would seem weird to say that worker ants are “trading” with the queen ant, given that it makes a lot of sense to view the colony as a single unit, working towards a common aim.
I also feel that “trade” has some extra meaning that I can’t get a handle on that isn’t covered by breaking it thus down.
I am thinking that the raise of eukaryotic cells could be understood as increased cooperation between a initially independent mitochondria and another cell. Switching context to be an dependent organelle the arrangement can be much more efficient. It is notable that eukariotic can do lot more macroscopic stuff but I wouldn’t exactly call it trade even if there is clear exchange of resources. Another maybe analogous situation would be jump from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms. It seems plausible that in order to get to multicellular life there would be a stepping stone of a cell that can do independent life but also benefits from groups.
I guess with the biological situations there is the feature that what they do is built into them. There is no consideration and acceptation or rejection of deals (or maybe some signal molecyles could be seen as such?)
If an organism can do stuff a group of cells can’t then probably a village or firm can do more than a group of people.
Part of the confusion here is over what the word “trade” means. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the proto-justification given that, “The point of trade is that sometimes people get different amounts of value from things, so they can get more value by trading them.” It’s just that, even in a society where everyone shares the same values, we get efficiency from specialization.
It seems like a further stipulation to refer to “specialization and transportation of resources” as “trade” if every party involved has the exact same values. Consider a colony of ants. There are various types of worker ants, and the queen ant, and each uses special behavioral tools to optimize their particular niche within the colony. Still, it would seem weird to say that worker ants are “trading” with the queen ant, given that it makes a lot of sense to view the colony as a single unit, working towards a common aim.
I also feel that “trade” has some extra meaning that I can’t get a handle on that isn’t covered by breaking it thus down.
I am thinking that the raise of eukaryotic cells could be understood as increased cooperation between a initially independent mitochondria and another cell. Switching context to be an dependent organelle the arrangement can be much more efficient. It is notable that eukariotic can do lot more macroscopic stuff but I wouldn’t exactly call it trade even if there is clear exchange of resources. Another maybe analogous situation would be jump from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms. It seems plausible that in order to get to multicellular life there would be a stepping stone of a cell that can do independent life but also benefits from groups.
I guess with the biological situations there is the feature that what they do is built into them. There is no consideration and acceptation or rejection of deals (or maybe some signal molecyles could be seen as such?)
If an organism can do stuff a group of cells can’t then probably a village or firm can do more than a group of people.
Exactly. Trade increases cooperation, which adds tremendous value to human life.
But is all cooperation trade? Is all value increase trade?