Not a Zero-Sum Game - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Foreword
by Roger Miller
THE PARADOX OF EXCHANGE
While I have much to say about this monograph, which is truly
a jewel, I would like to mention my first experiences with its
author, Manuel Ayau. When he was president of Universidad
Francisco Marroquin, he invited me to teach monetary theory.
During one of my first trips to Guatemala, I discovered an
environment at that time that was not quite what I had been used
to in the United States. One particular outspoken religious
leader had called for capitalists to be hung from every lamppost.
On another occasion, two experts from the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) came to visit the campus.
In a small room, Muso (as his friends call him) began a logical
and persistent grilling of what USAID was doing in Latin Amer-
ica. Within a relatively short period, he literally obliterated the
specious interventionist arguments that these USAID PhDs were
spewing (and using our taxpayer dollars to do so!). Muso's abil-
ity to present logical ideas in straightforward terminology has
only gotten better since then, as this monograph proves.
As I read the following pages, I was struck by how Ayau is able
to make what is so obvious to economists even more obvious.
Actually, just a few months before reading this, a Swiss friend
was essentially telling me how the rich could only get richer at
the expense of the nonrich. When I tried to explain to him that
voluntary exchange is not a zero-sum game, his eyes went
blank. He could not grasp that obvious concept because he had
never figured out how trade leads to economic growth, so that
there is more for everyone. Manuel Ayau, in contrast, explains