Adam smith invisible hand quotation1/17/2024 ![]() We are in a similar state today-except that we must broaden the “tribes” of “monopolists” to include not only enterprises protected from competition but also trade unions, school teachers, welfare recipients, and so on and on.Īdam Smith’s pessimism turned out to be only partly justified. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists (I, 435-36). The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the number of forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of such regulation to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. ![]() He had no great confidence in his chances of success-any more than we have today. He was no apologist for merchants and manufacturers, or more generally other special interests, but regarded them as the great obstacles to laissez faire-just as we do today. Today as then, government departs very far indeed from those elementary functions that Smith regarded as alone compatible with the “obvious and simple system of natural liberty.”Īdam Smith was a radical and revolutionary in his time-just as those of us who today preach laissez faire are in our time. Today to a far greater extent than in 1776, restrictions on foreign trade are reinforced by detailed interventions into domestic trade. Today as in 1776,īy restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them (I, 418). ![]() Yet there are many resemblances that make Adam Smith far more immediately relevant today than he was at the Centennial of The Wealth of Nations in 1876. History never repeats itself.” Yet “there is nothing new under the sun.” 1976 is not 1776.
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