Quoting Charlie Munger

"The cash register did more for human morality than the congregational church. It was a really powerful phenomenon to make an economic system work better, just as, in reverse, system that can be easily defrauded ruins a civilization. A system that’s very hard to defraud, like a cash register, helps the economic performance of a civilization by reducing vice, but very few people within economics talk about it in those terms." Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

The above quote is taken from the address by Charlie Munger during the Undergraduate Lecture to students of the University of California (Santa Barbara) on the 3rd October 2003. While the quote itself states how innovations assist the development of business and human progress agood proportion of the 25 page document is a reminder that microeceonomics( I prefer Price Thoery) is far more useful than is often acknowledged and is deserving of a higher profile than macroeceonomics. In addition, it states the very valid point that quantitative analysis added rigour to the discipline of economics but that the complexity of human interaction ensures that the pursuit of certainty is not entirely possible.

However, I categorically reject his view that the endevaour for free trading with China would lead to differential rates of economic growth in China's favour and therefore the ultimate supplantation of the US by China. He assumes that China's growth and domination is a given and that is an assumption that history, together with dispassionate analysis and simple use of an algorithm suggests to be an overstated but unlikely matter. I would bet against him on that.