Sublime

And thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever

Value is a conversation. In the iconic marketplace, described by Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, price is determined by fierce competition. Many producers are creating the same goods and many buyers are looking them over. No buyer or seller controls the process. The price is the result of all those people haggling.

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All this depends, however, on the rich using their profits to open new factories and hire new employees, rather than wasting them on non-productive activities. Smith therefore repeated like a mantra the maxim that ‘When profits increase, the landlord or weaver will employ more assistants’ and not ‘When profits increase, Scrooge will hoard his money

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Smith was trying to make a similar, Newtonian argument.3 God—or Divine Providence, as he put it—had arranged matters in such a way that our pursuit of self-interest would nonetheless, given an unfettered market, be guided “as if by an invisible hand” to promote the general welfare.

L’idée lumineuse d’Adam Smith fut de montrer que le marché pouvait mobiliser des informations sur les besoins des gens et sur le coût de leur satisfaction, coordonnant ainsi des milliards d’acheteurs et de vendeurs en un système global de prix, le tout sans avoir besoin d’un grand projet centralisé.

Thirdly, and lastly, everybody must be sensible how much labour is facilitated and abridged by the application of proper machinery.