Trade Contra Alienation: A Personal Anecdote
Marx is wrong about the effects of trade on human relations.
Last week, I met my parents to chow down on sushi at Iron Chef after works — thanks, parents! In the middle of our meal, the waitress approached us and struck up a conversation. Quite quickly, she identified us as the family at [street address and apartment number redacted] that has been ordering spicy salmon rolls — no tuna, please! (my mom’s allergic) — just about once a week for two decades. Although Iron Chef is an incredibly popular sushi place in Brooklyn Heights, one frequented by God-only-knows how many patrons, the waitress knew my family.
So much for that old addage about one ticket-taker and many people buying tickets.
The middle-aged Japanese immigrant who, in all likelihood, I would not have otherwise encountered meaningfully in my daily life had established a positive (albeit limited) relationship with me and my family through that which unites people of all backgrounds: trade. I’d prefix “trade” with “mutually beneficial,” but the latter is denoted by the former.
I have an even closer relationship with my barber, David, owner of Cutting Edge — I wrote about him and his business here — as well as the waiters at Clark’s, the best diner in Brooklyn Heights, and Mohammed Wasifi, better known as Tony, owner of Tony’s Halal: one of several belovéd food vendors outside Bronx Science. (Tony’s Halal was even been praised by the New York Times.)
The human propensity to truck, barter, and trade — i.e., trade value for value with each other — brings people closer together; it doesn’t drive us apart.