Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
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Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Knight wanted to question not just the ethical bases of a competitive economic order, but also the ethical norms that a market society fostered. “An examination of the ethics of the economic system must consider the question of the kind of wants which it tends to generate or nourish as well as its treatment of wants as they exist at any given
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Ultimately, Smith’s importance in the antebellum tariff debates had very little to do with substantive interest in what he had to say about trade, and more to do with what his thought had come to represent: an ideological and seemingly irresolvable conflict over the politics of free trade.
Glory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Ultimately, Smith’s importance in the antebellum tariff debates had very little to do with substantive interest in what he had to say about trade, and more to do with what his thought had come to represent: an ideological and seemingly irresolvable conflict over the politics of free trade.
Glory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
The method and substance that defined Chicago Price Theory evolved over many years, but its central tenet is that prices transmit information about what consumers want to buy and what producers want to sell; prices also reveal the incentives on which people act. Analysis of prices—what determines them, what causes them to change—informs the
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Adams feared that the goods of fortune would determine who had power—not just in terms of the formal structures of law and government, but in terms of people’s ability to “stand out, to be recognized, and to evoke favorable public sentiments.”161 In such a society, wondered Adams, “what chance has humble, modest, obscure, and poor merit in such a
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Though Hayek’s readings of Smith may have been opportunistic, they were not inaccurate.24 He was careful to distance his interpretation of Smith from those he found to be reductive or dogmatic. His interest in Smith’s works and their prominence stemmed, above all, from his impulse to lay the epistemic foundations for a social theory of markets and
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“Oeconomy in general is the art of providing for all the wants of a family, with prudence and frugality,” Steuart asserted in the first chapter of the work. “What oeconomy is in a family, political economy is in a state … The great art therefore of political economy is, first to adapt the different operations of it to the spirit, manners, habits,
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
Knight wanted to question not just the ethical bases of a competitive economic order, but also the ethical norms that a market society fostered. “An examination of the ethics of the economic system must consider the question of the kind of wants which it tends to generate or nourish as well as its treatment of wants as they exist at any given
... See moreGlory M. Liu • Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
By reworking Smithian concepts like “individualism,” “self-interest,” and “the invisible hand,” thinkers like Hayek, Stigler, and Friedman transformed Smith into an original way of thinking about an individualistic, market-oriented society that was justifiable on social-scientific grounds.