[quote]orion wrote:
tg2hbk4488 wrote:
Classical economics deals off the principles of the market system and supply and demand and things liek this…
…but Smith also wrote about how consumer and producers need morals for this to work. They can not be greedy or else the system will faulter
Hate to tell you. people are greedy. The market cant self regulate totally because of this. Price, supply, demand may be able to regulate but the market has flaws because of this lack of moral discipline
That is not what Smith wrote and I have the original on my bookshelf.
This is what he wrote:
But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good . It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
a) misrepresenting Smith is not good
b) expecting to get away with it is worse
c) I highlighted the part that might interest you most.
d) emphasis mine[/quote]
A) I am not misINTERPERTING Smith at all. I am fully aware of this statements of self-interest and “the invisible hand”. If you read about Smith definition of Sympathy you will find this:
" As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation." - The Theory of Moral Sentiments
In Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith develops a theory of psychology in which individuals find it in their self-interest to develop sympathy as they seek approval of the “impartial spectator.” The self-interest he speaks of is not a narrow selfishness but something that involves sympathy.
Furthermore, Smith did not advocate a market system based on unrestrained greed. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interestâ¿¿but it is not greed. Greed is a high paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards.
b) Don’t try to play me a fool because I am not. Worse is you try to get away with it, but you won’t
c) Your quote is a reference to how Smith states that one can not have Sympathy for all, but only a small sphere of sympathy for which he can understand.Smith rejected the idea that Man was capable of forming moral judgements beyond a limited sphere of activity, again centered around his own self-interest:
The administration of the great system of the universe … the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country… But though we are … endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.
Smith fully intends your you to care about yourself, family, friends. He jsut says I have no way or reason in MY self-interest to care about you, because of my limited area of sympathy.
So next time, before you try to misquote me, try reading what I say. I wanted to summarize what I said with greed vs self-interest in the above quote. Guess I will have be more specific next time for your thick skull
