Between the Alps and a Hard Place by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Economics

“Vae Victis!”

—Brennus

BESIEGED IN THEIR CAPITOL by Brennus’s barbarians from the north, the Romans had struck a bargain—so many measures of gold for lifting the siege. But as the gold was being weighed out, the Romans complained that the scales were fraudulent. Brennus’s reply, “Woe to the vanquished,” is usually translated as “To the victor belong the spoils.” To show that power trumps agreements, Brennus tossed his sword onto the balance. Legend has it that just then Furius Camillus (whose family name, then as now, implies a powerful emotion) appeared with the Roman army and declared, sword in hand, “Not with gold is the fatherland ransomed, but with iron.” Since Camillus beat Brennus, the scales’ accuracy was irrelevant. Had the battle gone the other way, it still would have been irrelevant: Brennus and the furious Roman agreed on one thing—the weight of gold matters less than the weight of swords.

Almost two-and-a-half millennia later, when the Swiss were besieged by the barbarian from the north and his Roman camp follower, they bargained nonstop about credit, about the terms of their merchandise trade, as well as about the uses to which the besiegers wanted to put the Swiss currency. In this respect, keep in mind Montesquieu’s dictum on economics: “Commerce is the profession of equals”—that is, true economic transactions take place when buyers and sellers are influenced only by the value they put on the goods exchanged. When one of the parties throws a sword into the balance, the relationship ceases to be economic. During the Second World War, both the Germans and the Swiss threw swords into their bargains. Those swords, of course, were of vastly different sizes at various times, and a third set of swords was floating around—that of the barbarians’ main enemies, the British and the Americans. So determined were these enemies to defeat the barbarians that they made demands on the Swiss regarding merchandise and currency not so different from those that the barbarians themselves were making. Obviously, the Swiss tried to balance the two sets of demands in their own interest.

Since time immemorial, small nations have been physically surrounded or otherwise importuned by larger ones at war with one another. Thucydides’ magisterial Peloponnesian War describes a dozen instances of negotiations that have occurred innumerable times in history. The small, would-be neutrals hear from both overwhelming armies: We have nothing against you. We really like you. We are fighting for our lives against our mortal enemies. If you really think about it, they are your mortal enemies, too. So we are really fighting your fight. You should be grateful. In these desperate days, we must have your help. It would be nice if you could make war on our enemy directly. If you cannot, we ask you at least to give us access to your economy, and above all not to trade with the enemy. We would like to pay you for the goods we want from you. But just now, for a variety of reasons that you must understand, we can’t come up with the cash, and you must accept our IOU.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.