| Indeed. People do individual things.
Governments implement policy (or at least should) to make sure these individual things are within the overall goals and policy objectives they have been elected on, and for the good of the whole of the country. Hence you have trade agreements and tariffs, tax, environmental regulations etc. And trade isn't always good. If you are exporting then you are using your own resources (human, minerals, environment) etc to do work for others. This may work for you at an individual level, but it may not work for the country. Four examples from the UK 1) Welsh Lamb. It is produced at great cost to the hill environment, including habitats and the knock on effects of flooding downstream. It was exported to the EU, while we were importing lamb from New Zealand to eat. 2) Fishing. Many of the fish caught in UK waters were exported because we were not used to eating them, while we were importing fish that we were used to eating. Individual fishermen probably did 'ok' out of this system, the companies above them doing much better. But coastal communities were not thriving, they were categorised as some of the poorest areas in the EU. Fishing didn't contribute to a sustainable environment for coastal communities. Then there is the environment, fishing stocks, discarded fishing gear etc. 3) Cars. This is a bit more difficult to solve, but we seem to spend endless resources in the EU and UK producing as many cars as possible. Despite them barely being used (a car sits idle 97% of the time) other than to financially cripple the owners. A car is very inefficient way to travel in the most populated places in the UK. Yet we have built our services around it, and continue to over produce millions of the things every year. Who is benefiting from this approach, rather than proper investment in a first class public transport system and associated planning system? 4) The drug trade. This is a trade full of highly skilled and resourceful people, it generates billions in complex imports and exports and logistics. This is good trade? No of course not. |
It doesn't seem like a particularly good way to ensure trade works well for everyone though!
I suspect the drug trade will not be massively affected either way by Brexit.