I've met a large number of great craftsmen who I would rate trustworthy and who are driven first by craftsmanship and for whom self-interest is a secondary interest.

I'm privileged to work at a great shop with some 20 other people for whom profit is just a small part of the goal. We call fiscal health "oxygen": It's something we need, but if it's present it should be allowed to fade from the forefront of our minds, instead focusing on more rewarding targets.

This works great when you're working with a small number of people, and when the company is driven by and owned by a very small, close-knit group of people - ideally, you can count them on one hand. This allows non-fiscal values to be communicated. Unfortunately, communication is difficult among large groups, and the easiest and most common means of communicating values is in dollars.

I'm not sure that a $7.5B company can maintain this idealism. "Behemoths" are going to be present whenever you have economies of scale, and post-industrial-revolution we don't have craftsmen who are butchers, we have vertically integrated behemoth butchers with million-dollar tractors growing the grain that rolls in on conveyors to feed the cows that are butchered and packaged by automated machines, so each package of beef has less hands-on time than it takes the craftsman to wrap the finished product in paper and twine. The craftsman is going to be relegated to the edges of that industry.

Agreed. And we're suffering all kinds of negative consequences from this system. I think one of the great economic questions facing our generation is "How can we keep the efficiencies of scale we've gained while reintroducing the craftman's motivations and ethics that have been lost?"

I have some ideas towards that direction, but make no claims on a definitive answer.

Worker cooperatives seem promising, since they change the average worker from "grunt" to "owner / director". It changes the incentive structure around what gets communicated and how as a company scales. Worker cooperatives also change the incentives around growth itself -- disincentivising growth beyond a certain point because each new worker waters down the voice and control of the existing ones.

AI driven automation and robotics, in a context of worker cooperatives, presents the possibility of keeping our production efficiencies (that used to require huge scales) while maintaining small organization sizes. We're not there yet, but it seems like we're not too far off.

I think reconfiguring the economy around these two ideas, presents the possibility of a good answer to the question posed above. And has lots of extra benefits beside (like building democracy into our economic system and not just our political system, and creating a system that more equitably distributes wealth by nature).

>Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world.

Whoever you do buy your food from has recognized there’s a portion of the market that values what you do and is happily selling it to you, out of their own self-interest.

I, for one, like McDonalds and sometimes prefer a Bud Light.

You've got it backwards. They are able to make a living happily doing their craft because there is a portion of the market that values their craft. They didn't choose their craft because they recognized their was a market for it. They chose their craft out of love of the craftsmanship.

Arguments like this fundamentally misunderstand human psychology. And this is why the economic model of the "rational man" is fundamentally flawed.

Lol this post shows an amazing savior complex. These poor altruistic artists just want to work for meagre amounts and no profit but thankfully heroes like you appreciate their craft and are unwilling to let them peddle their wares for anything lower than a healthy profit margin.

It has nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with the fact that most people are not driven by the hoarding of wealth. Most people recognize the need to make a profit because they need to survive and support their families, but it is not their primary motivator. If it were, there'd be millions more entrepreneurs than there are, and few people willing to work endless factory or desk jobs. For most people, they are primarily motivated to do things they enjoy doing. For the sorts of crafts people I'm talking about, those things are engaging in their craft.

Altruism has nothing to do with it. Although, psychological research has shown that economics has it wrong: most people are basically altruistic, not basically selfish. It's how we can be such a social species. But that's a different discussion for another time.

That’s totally backwards. Most people do their jobs because it pays the bills. Most people don’t have careers, with some glorious internal narrative in which they’re the protagonist. They have jobs. If they’re lucky or good spirited, they’ll find satisfaction or even enjoyment in their work. But they work because it gives them the means to get what they need and do at least some of what they really want to do.

Tho sarcastic, I upvoted you because you’re on target.

People who care about their craft are still driven by self interest: it's just that their internal value/utility puts a higher weight on the craft itself: since they get more out of the process of creating things that have craftsmanship, they are not distracted by the opportunity to make 5 cents more per loaf (or whatever).

> That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest.

Trust is orthogonal to craftsmanship.

> Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal.

It's less a philosophy than an understanding/insight regarding human behavior. You might as well say "it's time we stop putting newtonian physics on a pedestal", to the extent that both are reasonable models of human behavior, and are helpful in many, many real-world situations.

Arguing that people "shouldn't" behave according to Smith's expectations is going to be about as successful as arguing they shouldn't fall when they jump off a ladder.

> I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things.

Nor do I, but many people do, and that decision makes them different than me, not less than me.

You are conflating self-interest with greed. That is a great mistake in trying to understand Adam Smith. They are not the same thing.

Values, ethics, morals... are part of self-inrerst for lots of people.

Sure, you could argue that, and maybe Adam Smith was at the time. It's been a long time since I've read him, I'd have to go back and re-read it to decide to what degree I think he's making that argument. But that is not how most people understand self interest in an economic context and that is not how Adam Smith is mostly wielded today (see the post I'm responding to for an example). Most people understand "self interest" to be "financial self interest" of the sort that supposedly is the primary driver of the modern economic idea of the "rational self interested person" who operates in markets.

Further, the vast majority of stock corporations have no values, ethics, or morals. They have only the maximization of stock holder value -- which is to say: greed. We know this from piles and piles of data on corporate behavior.

People and organizations of people are very different creatures and behave in very different ways.

Of course: that is why Adam Smith speaks of people and not corporations. And I was speaking of people as well.

Corporations are a different subject matter.

Fair enough. However, the context of this discussion -- and the modern economic context -- is made up primarily of corporate actors.

Which is one more reason why the application of Adam's philosophy doesn't make sense.

I like your answer. But you say : "are part of self interest". In which way ? What puts self interest above those traits to make it encompass them ? 'cos I'd argue that if values, morals, ethics are part of self interest, then self interest is not much more than "personality". If so, self interest is not a concept that is very useful in itself... (no I didn't read A.Smith)

Evidently not to the extent that we can rely on self-interest as a viable regulatory mechanism.

then it’s practically a tautology

Most of western philosophy is just a bunch of tautologies. That is what makes it interesting.

how do you figure?

Careful, Friedman and Hayek basically took Smith's theories warped it beyond recognition, and it is these two men that most of western economics has been tirelessly focused on this last few decades.

Believing that humans are merely information processors acting at all times only in their 'rational self-interest' is an incredibly narrow and simplistic view of humanity.

Well, exactly, that is in another way, what I am stating: rational self interest is inherently unmeasurable because "rationality" is not something that can be objectively counted. So at any time one should assume that people act in their "self-interest": what at the time they deem "better" (in whatever their will decides is "better" at that point). I am not arguing that people never change or never act wrongly or never do things harmful to themselves. I am arguing that if one wants to "objectivize" their actions then one should assume that their decisions show their interests and their values at each time.

I'll never understand the middlebrow hate directed at America's most iconic brands. McDonalds made real business ownership a possibility for an entire generation of people that would have never had the resources to do something on that kind of scale. I actually like McDonalds' food, it's simple but endearing.

Bud Light might not be the most flavorful beer, but have you ever tried the original Budweiser? You know it's actually pretty darn good. And when you compare Bud Light to truly bottom-market beers, you begin to see the value of Budweiser's offering. Also, I don't know how many foreign countries you've visited, but a lot of them really desperately need a Bud Light just to give the local brewers some real competition. Some of the beers I had were just bad.

I can understand if you don't want to consume mass-market products, but really, you shouldn't just dismiss something because it looks big to you. These things solve real problems that people have, at real scale. Your local brewer might have great beer, and your local butcher might have great meat, but you know what would happen if everyone was at the mercy of local business? Everything would be 4x more expensive and wages would be half as much. Just like it was before those brands emerged.

I’d argue your craft beer, artisanal cheese, and hand-made distressed-wood furniture are all made out of self interest. You’ve simply chosen to believe the marketing positioning statements delivered by their million-dollar companies: that they operate out of some passion for a craft rather than increasing shareholder value.