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When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of the land, the wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock employed in raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price.
Adam Smith • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
One powerful feature of a market economy is that it directs resources to their most productive use.
Charles Wheelan • Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated)
Adam Smith explained: We conceive … a sort of gratitude for those inanimated objects, which have been the causes of great, or frequent pleasure to us. The sailor, who, as soon as he got ashore, should mend his fire with the plank upon which he had just escaped from a shipwreck, would seem to be guilty of an unnatural action. We should expect that h
... See moreNo deception need be feared in relationships with them, and an honest person can expect their needs to be met through reciprocation and trade.
Adam Smith • Exhausted Wives, Bewildered Husbands: Why your marriage is hurting, and how to blossom as a couple
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
... See moreYuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argues that the economic world is divided into laborers, landlords and merchants. Laborers earn their money from the sweat of their brows, landlords from rents, and merchants from profit.
Raj Patel • The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy
Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
... See moreAdam Smith • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
One reason for the necessity of a society is its role in ascribing and validating the titles to property. “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the preservation of their Property; to which in the state of nature there are many things wanting” (Locke).