This bad man, he thinks, profits from his embarrassment. Such was the reasoning that led people to the conclusion that the source from which the businessman's profits stem is their fellow men's need and suffering. According to this reasoning, the doctor makes his living from the patient's sickness, not from curing it. Bakeries thrive on hunger, not because they provide the means to appease the hunger. In an act of exchange only the seller gains, while the buyer comes off badly.
Commerce benefits the sellers by harming the buyers.
The advantage of foreign trade, says the Mercantilist doctrine, old and new, consists in exporting, not in the imports purchased by the exports. His skill is strategy, as it were, the art of inflicting as much evil as possible on the enemy. The adversaries whose ruin he plots are his prospective customers as well as his competitors, those who like himself embark upon raids against the people. The most appropriate method to investigate scientifically business activities and the market process is to analyze the behavior and strategy of people engaged in games. If the prize has been provided by a third party, the defeated party goes away empty-handed.