International Trade
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Social Choice
This is part of the series, "Is social choice practical as an economic system in the real world?" What about international trade. How does social choice relate to that? The citizens' of a particular country would each have a consumption preference ordering. If it turned out that products offered from abroad were cheaper than those produced domestically, the social choice might indicate that those products were preferred. If so, would this not build up a trade imbalance and wouldn't this create a problem? Not necessarily. The country providing those products would either buy products from us or build up credits toward future consumption of products from us just as a country's holding dollars represents a claim on future consumption which is manifested when those dollars are spent. There would have to be some provision that those claims could not be all redeemed in such a manner as to jolt the economic system, but, as long as they were redeemed in a gradual manner, there should be no problem other than that the citizenry of the overly consuming country would have to be willing at some later date to become harder workers to make up for their previous laziness.