Peace Through Commerce Background

Entrepreneurial market capitalism is the dominant economic system on the planet. More people are connected to the culture and engaged in the practice of capitalism than with any other cultural or social system.

Entrepreneurs are the engine of innovation, wealth creation, and social change. The prosperity, stability, and interconnectedness generated through ethical trade provide the underpinning for peace and general human flourishing.

FLOW and Peace Through Commerce Alliance Partners are committed to celebrating and advancing the role of entrepreneurial market capitalism in promoting peace and well being.

The Role of Commerce in Promoting Peace

Perhaps the most overlooked and yet the most powerful force for catalyzing widespread peace is commerce. International trade, based on the rule of law and secure property rights within nations, encourages a peaceful coincidence of interests.

Commerce leads to peace in various ways, including:

1. Trade requires at least a minimal level of cross-cultural understanding, communications, and collaboration. As it has done for millennia, the marketplace facilitates not only the exchange of goods and services, but also of ideas, beliefs, and customs, including music, food, and fashion. The bridges built between people and cultures through the marketplace foster understanding and peace.
2. Commerce cultivates mutual dependence among trading partners, which leads to a mutual interest in their respective survival and well-being. It also fosters friendship and deeper exchange.
3. Economic growth fueled by commerce leads to increased standard of living, which creates internal political stability, which highly correlates to peaceful relations with geopolitical neighbors.

Notes: 1Economic Freedom of the World: 2005 Annual Report by James Gwartney and Robert Lawson with Erik Gartzke, published by The Fraser Institute.