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The Real Adam Smith

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Re: The Real Adam Smith

#41

Post by IanDrake »

croon wrote: post #26
pravinva wrote: post #22

The 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.

That doesn’t make sense, unless you meant...

If one governs your rights, you don’t have any.

Freedom isn’t government granting you rights, it’s government protecting you from coercion.

If government is the source of your rights, then government can take those rights away.

If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of protecting them.

Corporations don’t have any power without government, which is why a limited government limits corporate power.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#42

Post by jbooth »

sprafa wrote: post #7
thanatropism wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never met a neoliberal "Neoliberal" is typically a term of abuse, but I've seen a movement (from econ professors to /r/neoliberal) to appropriate as a term for centrist radical pragmatism. These self-proclaimed neoliberals are very progressive socially and (claim to, at least) support any policies that have actual firm evidence for it. Of course, this makes them pro-trade and pro-"globalism".

there's plenty of evidence that globalism has not worked out for substantial parts of the population in most developed countries.

> globalism has not worked out for substantial parts of the population in most developed countries

Pardon my language, but that's crap. Every developed country has seen yuuuuge profits from globalism.

What, not all of it trickled down you say? That's a distribution problem. It's not a problem with globalization.

Shrinking the pie in order to pursue a more fair distribution is some ass-backwards, rube-goldberg-machine nonsense. Take the profits, fix the distribution. Invest in infrastructure while you're at it.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#43

Post by nwah1 »

I'm surprised it didn't mention an obvious difference from modern conceptions of the free market: he thought landownership was a monopoly privilege that could be taxed without harm, so long as you are taxing only the land rent itself, not the improvements.

"Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground." - Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#44

Post by tonyedgecombe »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #23
briandear wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The UN defines "absolute poverty" as:

A condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services.

The percentage of people at this level has been falling for a long time and is now less than 10% of the global population, nowhere near 3 billion.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#45

Post by optimuspaul »

IanDrake wrote: post #41
croon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn’t make sense, unless you meant... If one governs your rights, you don’t have any. Freedom isn’t government granting you rights, it’s government protecting you from coercion. If government is the source of your rights, then government can take those rights away. If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of…

> Corporations don’t have any power without government, which is why a limited government limits corporate power.

That's a fairly naive view. Corporations have lots of power, potentially unlimited power, without government. A limited government has a limited ability to protect the people and limit corporate power. We need a strong democratic government, because in the end people are what matters.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#46

Post by croon »

IanDrake wrote: post #41
croon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn’t make sense, unless you meant... If one governs your rights, you don’t have any. Freedom isn’t government granting you rights, it’s government protecting you from coercion. If government is the source of your rights, then government can take those rights away. If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of…

> Corporations don’t have any power without government, which is why a limited government limits corporate power.

They have as much power as they have resources to enforce, which is a lot more than you have, meaning they have a lot more - and in practice all - power.

> If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of protecting them.

A governing body is a collective agreement over what rights and freedoms its members deem fit. If you have none, as you said, you have the full burden of protecting them. Someone else (in the case of n-1 of all people) will always have more resources to protect (or impose on others) their freedoms/rights.

You either end up losing your rights/freedoms, or you establish a coalition with other nearby people, but you won't call it a government, because for some reason that word is bad.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#47

Post by crdoconnor »

RobertoG wrote: post #24
yedava wrote: post #10

I 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…

This is exactly why the US was set up with a balance of powers between the separate branches of government. The judiciary/legislative can hold the executive to account, etc.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#48

Post by croon »

golergka wrote: post #36
croon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a difference between a state and a corporation: one of those is a monopoly by definition.

> There is a difference between a state and a corporation: one of those is a monopoly by definition.

There is another difference: one of those grants voting (and other) rights to all its members.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#49

Post by phaemon »

nickik wrote: post #27

Ah, 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 c…

From Paul Sagar's bio (the author of this article):

"i am lecturer in political theory in the department of political economy, king’s college london

i completed my doctorate at the university of cambridge (2014), after receiving an ma in intellectual history and the history of political thought from the university of london (2010), and a ba in politics, philosophy, and economics from the university of oxford (2008). from 2014-17 i was junior research fellow at king’s college, cambridge. my doctoral thesis centred upon the political thought of david hume in the context of british debates over the nature of human sociability and moral psychology. i extended this research in my recently completed book, the opinion of mankind: sociability and the state from hobbes to smith, published with princeton university press. alongside my work in the history of political thought i also research contemporary political theory. i am in the early stages of researching a second monograph, which will explore adam smith’s political thought as grounded in his views of history and commercial society."

(the original is in all caps, hence the lack of capitalisation)

From you: "Nothing in the article is really wrong"

Well, thanks for that. I'm going to take a wild guess that the author knows a hell of a lot more about Adam Smith than you do, even if you have been "interested in these for many years".

And I think that applies doubly to the other critics above.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#50

Post by arethuza »

RobertoG wrote: post #28
pravinva wrote: post #22

The 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]. [1] http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society…

I seem to remember that Thatcher was all for society when it came to fighting wars (NB I am from the UK and old enough to vividly remember the war in question).
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