Chapter 1. Commerce and the Republic
Johnathan Bi: One of the most radical ideas of the American founders, put provocatively, is that greed is good, right? That commerce should be encouraged. And I think people don’t realize how radical of an idea this is until they read the classics, whether it’s the Christian thinkers, whether it’s the classical authors like Plato or Aristotle, whether it’s Confucius, who all diminish the merchant class as one of the lower classes and mercantile activity as a very demeaning activity. So what changed theoretically?