• • • Asking Yaron Brook: What is Objectivism really all about? 
Joseph Cotto, Washington Times - Communities Ayn Rand Institute  |Atlas Shrugged  |Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal  |The Virtue of Selfishness  |Capitalism  |Don Watkins  |Egoism  |Individual Rights  |Individualism  |Onkar Ghate  |Yaron Brook  |Image  | Cotto: Objectivism embraces free trade with a passion. However, the absence of protective tariffs has rarely led countries to long term prosperity; financially or socially speaking. Why, then, do you feel that free trade is a sound idea?

Dr. Brook: The evidence from history and economics overwhelmingly shows that free trade leads to prosperity. Tariffs harm consumers by coercively raising prices for the products they value—in other words, tariffs sacrifice the hard-earned dollars of some Americans to “protect” others. But it is not the government’s job to punish us for buying foreign goods. The decision of which products to buy, whether they be domestically or internationally produced, should be left to individual Americans.   Published: 2012-09-04