Sublime

Adam Smith, an economist too often read as a blunt apologist for all aspects of consumer society, but in fact one of its more subtle and visionary analysts. In his The Wealth of Nations, Smith seems at points willing to concede to key aspects of Mandeville’s argument: consumer societies do help the poor by providing employment based around satisfyi

In his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

dearer,

In the eighth chapter of its first volume, Smith made the following novel argument: when a landlord, a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs to maintain his own family, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants, in order to further increase his profits. The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows th

Darwin’s greatest single influence was Adam Smith. Smith believes in the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. He says it

Smith’s view was that the most just mechanism for allocating resources from the point of view of the individual was one that enabled people to pursue their own self-interest and make their own choices. After all, people are usually the best judges of their own happiness. At the same time, the best allocation of resources for society as a whole was

Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer