study of Plato’s thought on exchange reveals an insight into certain specific points, of interest to modern economics, which are commonly overlooked. His protest against the former axiom of economics, that the prime purpose of trade is profit, and that the mere fact that goods change hands, necessarily increases the wealth of a country, is substantially correct.239 Commerce for commerce’ sake is a clear case of mistaking the means for the end, and is contrary to sound economics as well as ethics. The objections of Plato and Ruskin240 against the principle too generally accepted by business and economy of the past, at least tacitly, that “it is the buyer’s function to cheapen and the seller’s to cheat,” are being recognized today as worthy of consideration.
The anxiety of Plato over the effect of trades or professions upon character is well worthy of modern imitation, and this is, to a considerable extent, an economic as well as a moral question. Zimmern241 has well observed: “Our neglect to study the effect of certain modern professions upon character, when we are always insisting, and rightly, upon the importance of a character-forming education, is one of the strangest lapses, due to the sway of nineteenth-century economics.”