Vito on Nostr: Now about your question. Ludwig von Mises warned that the replacement of living ...

Now about your question. Ludwig von Mises warned that the replacement of living economic agents with abstract concepts leads to errors in further reasoning. Free trade is one of these abstractions. Free trade is a convenient abstraction that denotes the actions of specific people. To answer your question, you need to replace the trade with people in it. Then your question is: Do people who trade without outside interference thrive?
Such a question requires clarification: what kind of people, what do they sell, etc.? It is not for nothing that they say that the answer to any question is hidden in the question itself, if it is correctly formulated. And the answer is obvious: not all people prosper, not from all transactions, not all their lives. It is easier to draw generalized conclusions than to be guided by them in life.