Are you a patriot?

Are you in favor of the free market?

It may be that saying yes to one means saying no to the other.

If you are simply a thrifty consumer, you want the best deal. You want to pay as little as possible for the goods and services that you need and desire. It is certainly the easiest way to decide; you know what you need, you look at the options, and you make your decision based upon how little it costs you. Whether it comes from one country or another doesn’t enter into the decision.

That mirrors the corporate approach. If you are a company, you don’t really care in which country you are manufacturing, distributing, and marketing your product…except to the extent that you need to know the applicable language, laws, and particular motivations of the buyers. All you really need to know is where you can have these things done with the least expense, or the most favorable conditions (of which expense is usually the main consideration).

If you are purely a patriot (and I mean that only in terms of buying products at this point), you will only buy products that support your own country, bolster your own economy, and put your fellow countrymen to work — regardless of price. You want your money to stay within our borders, you want your community to be responsible for its own economic health.

Therefore, as a patriot, you cannot wholeheartedly support the freedom of markets. You must be willing to pay more than the bottom line, both as a consumer and as a company.

Or, on the other hand, you must admit that patriotism is not of overriding importance and resign yourself to buying and selling outside your borders.

There is a middle ground, which we will explore in the next section.