He also rejected the idea that governments need concern themselves with the drinking habits of poor people or have any business passing sumptuary laws to restrain how poor people dress. For many years Smith himself occupied a chair in moral philosophy that had been established by the Scottish government precisely to help underwrite public morals, yet he ultimately rejected the idea that this was a proper function of government. In Smith’s time it was widely held that ordinary people needed guidance from their “betters”-from the wise and the virtuous-and that a good political system would both try to restrain the lower classes from self-destructive behaviors (drink, wearing luxurious clothing) and provide instruction in religion and virtue. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs.” (WN II.iii.36 346. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. “It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the oeconomy of private people, and to restrain their expence either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. And it is this view that explains both much of Smith’s philosophy, and the degree to which his politics anticipated modern libertarianism. The distinctive mark of Smith’s thought is his view of human cognition, not of human motivation: he is far more willing than practically any of his contemporaries to endorse the ability of ordinary people to know what they need to know in life. Everything Smith says about the importance of self-interest is quite humdrum, for his day: he rejects Mandeville’s cynical reduction of all human motivations to self-interest, is a greater believer in the possibility of concern for others than Hume, allows more room for sincere religious faith than Voltaire, and differs barely at all from the gentle Hutcheson on the role of self-interest in economics.įar more important to Smith’s work is the belief that ordinary people normally understand their own interests without help from politicians or professional philosophers.

To claim that Smith’s Wealth of Nations ( WN) is grounded on the assumption that people inevitably act out of self-interest, and to imply that the book’s major contribution grows out of that assumption, is to misread it severely.

“ The Wealth of Nations is a stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self-interest.” 1 So wrote George Stigler, and he represents the majority view over the last two centuries.

Sam smith quotes economics