What's that Skip? Another lefty academic trying to discredit people he doesn't like by ascribing views to them that they don't actually hold?
Snore.
The Real Adam Smith
21–30 of 125 posts
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#22The writer tries to pretend that there is something drastically opposite from knowing that the state captured by business is different from the danger of mere statism. Well, the answer that preserves liberty is to reduce the chances of the state being captured. This begins by having a limited govt. If the madam of the bordello is out of business, there is no need for customers to line up
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's plenty of evidence that globalism has not worked out for substantial parts of the population in most developed countries.
There is also substantial evidence that it has. The poor in America are richer and have higher living standards than the poor of less-globalized places. Absolute poverty in developed countries is far lower than at any possible by in history. In fact the same could be said for absolute poverty globally. And that, is a direct result of globalization.
What do you mean by "absolute poverty"?
While the proportion of people living in poverty may have been getting lower, the absolute number of people living in poverty has never been higher.
3 billion people live in poverty. This is the same as the total global population in 1960.
https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-p...
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#24I like to view this another way - too much concentration of power is a bad thing and we should strive for decentralizing it. So if merchants, in collusion with the state hold too much power, then the state needs to be cut down. Conversely if private players accumulate too much power, that too needs to be cut down, increasing the role of state if necessary. There is no universal approach that will always be true. Depe…
All that is very nice in theory, but who is doing the "cut down"?
By definition it has to be some entity more powerful that the entity that is cut down. And who should control that entity but the majority of the society?
So, we finish with the (very imperfect) solution of a democratic government. We should recognize that it's going to be a lot of interest trying to corrupt it and we (the people) have to keep watching and steering.
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The poor in America are richer and have higher living standards than the poor of less-globalized places. This is complete nonsense and makes you sound like someone who should take some time volunteering with America's poor. Clearly you have no idea what poverty is like and should earn some perspective. Are you trying to say that hunger in America is any different from hunger in a "less globalized place"? How so? Ho…
Extreme. The poor can refer to the bottom quintile of socioeconomic class. We don't have to jump to the bottom tenth of a percent. In that view, the comment is valid. The bottom earners in America earn more than most people on the planet. And have better infrastructure.
Google "what percent of Americans face hunger" and get back to me about one tenth of one percent. That is a number you made up in your head just now.
Extreme might be saying we should compare America to the poorest nations on earth. If you compare America to its peers the average American earns less, and the country has worse infrastructure.
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#26The writer tries to pretend that there is something drastically opposite from knowing that the state captured by business is different from the danger of mere statism. Well, the answer that preserves liberty is to reduce the chances of the state being captured. This begins by having a limited govt. If the madam of the bordello is out of business, there is no need for customers to line up
If no one governs your rights/freedoms, you don't have any.
There is no difference between an unchecked corporation and a corrupt state. The answer doesn't lie at either end, but in a balance.
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#27Ah, we have the Adam Smith article again.
As somebody interested in these for many years, there is a periodic rewriting of this article.
The beats are always the same, Smith not actually like evil neoliberals (whoever that is) think. He also wrote 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' and so on. Admittedly this is by far the best one I have seen in many years.
Nothing in the article is really wrong, and it is completely correct the same analysis Smith used can often be used against people on both sides of politics.
I would tell people not only to focus on Smith but rather see him in a broader context with Hume, Ferguson and there English predecessors.
Overall we need to value individual freedom of choice both socially and economically, we need to strongly protect human rights, the political power must be limited and so on. Free people working for themselves, their family or friend, their community can achieve things that are beneficial for all if these interactions take place in such a framework.
> Thatcher’s restructuring of the economy was as much a product of the ‘spirit of system’ as any Soviet strategy
While this critic is certainty true we must also realize that if you accept Smith and the Scottish ideas, we need to find some way back to the ideas of individual liberty and limited power of government, specially government and business working together.
So there is still a very, vary large difference between going towards such a system or to go towards the Soviet union.
Here is a good podcast about Adam Smith: > http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/06/otteson_on_adam.htm...
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#28The writer tries to pretend that there is something drastically opposite from knowing that the state captured by business is different from the danger of mere statism. Well, the answer that preserves liberty is to reduce the chances of the state being captured. This begins by having a limited govt. If the madam of the bordello is out of business, there is no need for customers to line up
The alternative view is that 'power abhors a vacuum'.
If we, the society, don't fill it with a government and try to control it (admittedly not an easy, and always imperfect, endeavour), it will be fill by something that have not our interest as a priority.
Of course, this doesn't make sense for people who think, literally, that "there is no such thing as society" [1].
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extreme. The poor can refer to the bottom quintile of socioeconomic class. We don't have to jump to the bottom tenth of a percent. In that view, the comment is valid. The bottom earners in America earn more than most people on the planet. And have better infrastructure.
Google "what percent of Americans face hunger" and get back to me about one tenth of one percent. That is a number you made up in your head just now. Extreme might be saying we should compare America to the poorest nations on earth. If you compare America to its peers the average American earns less, and the country has worse infrastructure.
Ok, done. 15% are 'food insecure' which is a broad range including 'skip a meal sometimes'.
15% worldwide live on less than 1.25 a day. So again, comparing America's poor with the world is like night and day.
Re: The Real Adam Smith
#30This article is mostly accurate about Smith (although the man himself was much more favorable to entrepreneurs and innovators than is presented), but fairly inaccurate that “Right-wing” politics is some perversion of Smith. At the end, we get a taste of what he means in that Thatcher privatized various state industries during her run as Prime Minister in the '80s. Otherwise, an entire sub-field of economics (it would…
The article gives a good description of a major facet of Neoliberalism: "[a] movement that seeks (as Thatcher hoped) to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state". If you have heard someone whining about the nefarious "Big Government" and the need for deregulation, then you've met a Neoliberal. The point of the article is summarized by the author in a paragraph: """ The message that Smith conveys cuts across party and id…
> If you have heard someone whining about the nefarious "Big Government" and the need for deregulation, then you've met a Neoliberal.
That is an very inaccurate generalization, liable to be wrong at least ~50-75% of the time these days, maybe not in the 1980s or 90s and earlier, but certainly today as it's become a catchall for everything the (new?) left doesn't like.