To understand why people choose to depend on others for goods and services and how this choice improves their lives, let’s look at simple economy. Imagine that their are two goods in the world: meet and potatoes. And there are two people in the world a cattle rancher and a potato farmer each of whom would like to eat both meat potatoes. The gains from trade are most obvious if the rancher van produce only meat and the farmer can produce only potatoes. In one scenario, the rancher and the farmer could choose to have nothing to do with each other. But after several months of eating beef roasted, boiled, boiled, and grilled, the rancher might decide that self-sufficiency is not all it,s cracked up to be. The farmer who has been eating potatoes mashed, fried, baked, and scalloped, would likely agree. It is easy to see that trade would allow them to enjoy greater variety: Each could then have a steak with a baked potato or a burger with fries. Although this scen...