[Looking Backwards from 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy]@TWC D-Link book
Looking Backwards from 2000 to 1887

CHAPTER 13
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Of course no nation is theoretically bound to supply another with the product of its own labor, but it is for the interest of all to exchange some commodities.
If a nation is regularly supplying another with certain goods, notice is required from either side of any important change in the relation." "But what if a nation, having a monopoly of some natural product, should refuse to supply it to the others, or to one of them ?" "Such a case has never occurred, and could not without doing the refusing party vastly more harm than the others," replied Dr.Leete.
"In the fist place, no favoritism could be legally shown.

The law requires that each nation shall deal with the others, in all respects, on exactly the same footing.

Such a course as you suggest would cut off the nation adopting it from the remainder of the earth for all purposes whatever.

The contingency is one that need not give us much anxiety." "But," said I, "supposing a nation, having a natural monopoly in some product of which it exports more than it consumes, should put the price away up, and thus, without cutting off the supply, make a profit out of its neighbors' necessities?
Its own citizens would of course have to pay the higher price on that commodity, but as a body would make more out of foreigners than they would be out of pocket themselves." "When you come to know how prices of all commodities are determined nowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that they could be altered, except with reference to the amount or arduousness of the work required respectively to produce them," was Dr.Leete's reply.

"This principle is an international as well as a national guarantee; but even without it the sense of community of interest, international as well as national, and the conviction of the folly of selfishness, are too deep nowadays to render possible such a piece of sharp practice as you apprehend.


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