Smith on Government Roles
Attorney Jonathan Emord writes(19 October) in News With Views HERE:
“OVERNIGHT SOLUTION TO THE NATION'S ECONOMIC WOES”
“There is an alternative to this highly paternalistic and historically failed approach to problem solving. It is the alternative view, understood to be a moral imperative by the primary author of it, that Scottish philosopher Adam Smith in his rebuttal to mercantilism, The Wealth of Nations. To paraphrase Smith, it is not by the benevolence of the butcher or the baker by which we obtain our meat and bread but by the pursuit of their own self interest. In short, self interest in the market causes those who would profit to find ingenious means to improve the human condition, for which others are willing to pay. For the benefit arising from invention, the inventor is given a just reward, profit. If the inventor is allowed to keep the lion’s share of that profit, he or she will have an incentive to invent yet again, and, if he or she guesses correctly, will hit upon yet another item that best suits the needs of consumers, lifting their standard of living in the process.
Rather than place faith in the market which has proven its profound power to transform and uplift, the present administration places boundless faith in government. Government is that great parasite that the Founding Fathers viewed as a necessary evil, one to be limited and checked so as to avoid its intrusion into our daily affairs. As government has grown exponentially, it has proven itself in every nation incapable of solving the vast majority of the human problems that its political rulers expropriate private funds to solve.”
Comment
The sentiments, broadly speaking, expressed by Jonathan Emord should appeal to many people needing a headline slogan approach rather than a detailed policy, because the stuff of practical politics is much more complex when the details are examined for selection prior to implementation.
Emord’s theme is an “overnight solution”, typical of a lawyer’s thinking – review the facts, come to a verdict, pronounce it, and then leave other people to run with its consequences. And his “overnight solution” would certainly have consequences.
I am not sure that his star witness, Adam Smith, offered quite the passive advice attributed to him by Emord:
“To paraphrase Smith, it is not by the benevolence of the butcher or the baker by which we obtain our meat and bread but by the pursuit of their own self interest.”
What happened to the “brewer”, as in “the butcher, the brewer, and the baker”, all three apparently necessary for an 18th century “dinner” (WN I.ii.2: 27)? (I note that it is quite common for the “brewer” to be missed off such “paraphrases”, and also from supposed direct quotations, mainly, I presume, from religious hostility to the consumption of alcohol).
The main point, however, is that the motivation from self-interest is not a one-way bet; the self-interest of the potential consumer also counts and differences between the producer and consumer are reconciled by their mediating their self-interests into a price acceptable to both of them.
Smith advises consumers to “address” the other’s “self-love”, while refraining from addressing ”our own necessities”; instead address “their advantages” from concluding a transaction. In short, from offering them a “bargain”: “Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want” (WN I.ii.3: 26). The parties are not just “price” takers – they bargain, and do so in condition where there is competition emanating from the presence of other buyers and from other sellers.
Emord goes on to assert that “Government is that great parasite that the Founding Fathers viewed as a necessary evil, one to be limited and checked so as to avoid its intrusion into our daily affairs.” I cannot speak with authority on the “Founding Fathers” viewing government as a “necessary evil”, as in that they preferred not have a government, but I suspect this view is exaggerated.
The duties of government, according to Smith, were to cover the expenses of “defence”, “justice”, certain “public works and public institutions” and the “dignity” of the “sovereign” (WN V.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h:663-814).
Smith noted that defence was “of much more important than opulence” (WN IV.vii.30: 464-5), justice was the absolute necessity of society (without justice society “would crumble into atoms” (TMS II.ii.3.4: 86), public institutions were “necessary to facilitate commerce”, including public education (“gross ignorance and stupidity” threaten the “safety of the government” and “frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders” (WN V.i.f. 61: 788) and palliative health care (WN V.i.f.60: 787-8), and (substituting the ‘sovereign’ by ‘government’), enabling the government to “perform its several duties” (WN i.h.i.1: 814).
Smith denounced the role of several governments in pursuing the wrong policies, summed an “mercantile political economy” and challenged the competence of ministers to make decisions on behalf of the individual, but he did not preclude government enacting certain measures and enforcing them through the courts on the conduct of individual “merchants and manufacturers” when they acted against the public interest. In particular, the early forms of banking outside of any regulations to protect the public interests were dangerous to prosperity, and he advocated certain interventions to protect against “misconduct”.
These interventions he conceded were a “manifest violation of … natural liberty” but “ those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed (WN II.ii.94: 324).
The popular image among certain sections of Adam Smith being the enemy of government (the advocate of the “night-watchman state”) is quite false in its generality. Indeed, the metaphor of the “night-watchman state” was an expression introduced by Ferdinand Lasselle, the 19th-century firebrand socialist, and not Adam Smith!
It was the policies of 17th-18th century governments that Smith railed against, and not the fact that they had policies. Because Smith criticised many of the then existing policies of governments, many readers in a hurry concluded he was opposed to all government policies.
Adam Smith was not an ideologue. He observed that legislators and those who influenced them, especially the special interest groups of “merchants and manufacturers”, commonly were the worst offenders. From this background he did not advocate “laissez-faire” – he never used the words - because he could see where leaving policies to the parliamentary clients of “merchants and manufacturers” had led Britain.
Whether, Jonathan Emord’s “overnight” prescription would work if implemented – which would require the legislature to enact it, many of whom are tied, sometimes by “obligations”, others indirectly by constituency special interests – is another question. It is not a serious (as in likely to be enacted) proposition.
“OVERNIGHT SOLUTION TO THE NATION'S ECONOMIC WOES”
“There is an alternative to this highly paternalistic and historically failed approach to problem solving. It is the alternative view, understood to be a moral imperative by the primary author of it, that Scottish philosopher Adam Smith in his rebuttal to mercantilism, The Wealth of Nations. To paraphrase Smith, it is not by the benevolence of the butcher or the baker by which we obtain our meat and bread but by the pursuit of their own self interest. In short, self interest in the market causes those who would profit to find ingenious means to improve the human condition, for which others are willing to pay. For the benefit arising from invention, the inventor is given a just reward, profit. If the inventor is allowed to keep the lion’s share of that profit, he or she will have an incentive to invent yet again, and, if he or she guesses correctly, will hit upon yet another item that best suits the needs of consumers, lifting their standard of living in the process.
Rather than place faith in the market which has proven its profound power to transform and uplift, the present administration places boundless faith in government. Government is that great parasite that the Founding Fathers viewed as a necessary evil, one to be limited and checked so as to avoid its intrusion into our daily affairs. As government has grown exponentially, it has proven itself in every nation incapable of solving the vast majority of the human problems that its political rulers expropriate private funds to solve.”
Comment
The sentiments, broadly speaking, expressed by Jonathan Emord should appeal to many people needing a headline slogan approach rather than a detailed policy, because the stuff of practical politics is much more complex when the details are examined for selection prior to implementation.
Emord’s theme is an “overnight solution”, typical of a lawyer’s thinking – review the facts, come to a verdict, pronounce it, and then leave other people to run with its consequences. And his “overnight solution” would certainly have consequences.
I am not sure that his star witness, Adam Smith, offered quite the passive advice attributed to him by Emord:
“To paraphrase Smith, it is not by the benevolence of the butcher or the baker by which we obtain our meat and bread but by the pursuit of their own self interest.”
What happened to the “brewer”, as in “the butcher, the brewer, and the baker”, all three apparently necessary for an 18th century “dinner” (WN I.ii.2: 27)? (I note that it is quite common for the “brewer” to be missed off such “paraphrases”, and also from supposed direct quotations, mainly, I presume, from religious hostility to the consumption of alcohol).
The main point, however, is that the motivation from self-interest is not a one-way bet; the self-interest of the potential consumer also counts and differences between the producer and consumer are reconciled by their mediating their self-interests into a price acceptable to both of them.
Smith advises consumers to “address” the other’s “self-love”, while refraining from addressing ”our own necessities”; instead address “their advantages” from concluding a transaction. In short, from offering them a “bargain”: “Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want” (WN I.ii.3: 26). The parties are not just “price” takers – they bargain, and do so in condition where there is competition emanating from the presence of other buyers and from other sellers.
Emord goes on to assert that “Government is that great parasite that the Founding Fathers viewed as a necessary evil, one to be limited and checked so as to avoid its intrusion into our daily affairs.” I cannot speak with authority on the “Founding Fathers” viewing government as a “necessary evil”, as in that they preferred not have a government, but I suspect this view is exaggerated.
The duties of government, according to Smith, were to cover the expenses of “defence”, “justice”, certain “public works and public institutions” and the “dignity” of the “sovereign” (WN V.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h:663-814).
Smith noted that defence was “of much more important than opulence” (WN IV.vii.30: 464-5), justice was the absolute necessity of society (without justice society “would crumble into atoms” (TMS II.ii.3.4: 86), public institutions were “necessary to facilitate commerce”, including public education (“gross ignorance and stupidity” threaten the “safety of the government” and “frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders” (WN V.i.f. 61: 788) and palliative health care (WN V.i.f.60: 787-8), and (substituting the ‘sovereign’ by ‘government’), enabling the government to “perform its several duties” (WN i.h.i.1: 814).
Smith denounced the role of several governments in pursuing the wrong policies, summed an “mercantile political economy” and challenged the competence of ministers to make decisions on behalf of the individual, but he did not preclude government enacting certain measures and enforcing them through the courts on the conduct of individual “merchants and manufacturers” when they acted against the public interest. In particular, the early forms of banking outside of any regulations to protect the public interests were dangerous to prosperity, and he advocated certain interventions to protect against “misconduct”.
These interventions he conceded were a “manifest violation of … natural liberty” but “ those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed (WN II.ii.94: 324).
The popular image among certain sections of Adam Smith being the enemy of government (the advocate of the “night-watchman state”) is quite false in its generality. Indeed, the metaphor of the “night-watchman state” was an expression introduced by Ferdinand Lasselle, the 19th-century firebrand socialist, and not Adam Smith!
It was the policies of 17th-18th century governments that Smith railed against, and not the fact that they had policies. Because Smith criticised many of the then existing policies of governments, many readers in a hurry concluded he was opposed to all government policies.
Adam Smith was not an ideologue. He observed that legislators and those who influenced them, especially the special interest groups of “merchants and manufacturers”, commonly were the worst offenders. From this background he did not advocate “laissez-faire” – he never used the words - because he could see where leaving policies to the parliamentary clients of “merchants and manufacturers” had led Britain.
Whether, Jonathan Emord’s “overnight” prescription would work if implemented – which would require the legislature to enact it, many of whom are tied, sometimes by “obligations”, others indirectly by constituency special interests – is another question. It is not a serious (as in likely to be enacted) proposition.
Labels: Adam Smith no ideologue, Government, Laissez-Faire, Night Watchman States
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