One thing that corporations have been remarkably good at is promoting peace. While the defense industry is a huge exception to this, war just disrupts too many profits if it occurs somewhere there is business. Although there are some exceptions to Thomas Friedman's claim that no two countries with a McDonalds have ever gone to war with each other, it has generally been true.
I am reminded of this when I see that we are finally easing travel restrictions from China. It is blindingly obvious that we should do this. A huge tourist market is being blocked by draconian travel restrictions. We are hurting our own business for no reason other than silly paranoia. Not only do we stand to make a fortune off removing these restrictions, but tourism is important for national security. When people come and visit this country, it is a lot harder for their government to feed them propaganda about us. This will do a whole heck of a lot more than sending you through body scanners to keep us safe.
The only thing that helps us more than tourists, is college students. America educates the rich and powerful of the entire world. This is an absurdly good investment for us. You can go to almost any country in the world and the leader of that country has friends whose children are studying at some big name American university. Do you think they would want to go to war with us while those kids are here?
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