Re:Amazon Investigates Employees Leaking Data for Bribes
by dredmorbius on Sunday September 16, 2018 @06:08PM
(#18001470)
Smith speaks to this as well, as I'd recently posted.
And to clarify, because the point is often missed: I'm not mentioning Smith because I agree with all he's written, and certainly not for what he's claimed to have said, or to suggest that Jacob Viners very tortured re-assembling of various snippets across three separate books of the work is the book's central message. Smith is verbose as hell, but can, and does, get to the point when he really wants to:
"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." "A man must live by his work." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." "[Political economy proposes] first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people...; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services."
Smith isn't the last word on economics. And he's not the first. His views, even when wrong, are almost always well-considered, and it's usually possible to learn from his mistakes. And he anticipates a verry surprisingly large number of present concerns (with a few gaping holes: mechanisation and automation are almost wholly ignored, even though Smith personally arranged for a position for James Watt at Edinborough).
He is simultaneously highly influential, greatly ignored, and tremendously misrepresented. Reading him is extremely revealing, though I'd suggest he not be thee sum total of your economic education.
But what he absolutely is not is the laissez-faire advocate of harsh market therapy for all things, and corporate apologist, he's often represented to be, by both critics and so-called advocates. Which even brief passages can make clear. His two chapters on wages particularly.
And to clarify, because the point is often missed: I'm not mentioning Smith because I agree with all he's written, and certainly not for what he's claimed to have said, or to suggest that Jacob Viners very tortured re-assembling of various snippets across three separate books of the work is the book's central message. Smith is verbose as hell, but can, and does, get to the point when he really wants to:
"Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power." "A man must live by his work." "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." "[Political economy proposes] first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people...; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services."
Smith isn't the last word on economics. And he's not the first. His views, even when wrong, are almost always well-considered, and it's usually possible to learn from his mistakes. And he anticipates a verry surprisingly large number of present concerns (with a few gaping holes: mechanisation and automation are almost wholly ignored, even though Smith personally arranged for a position for James Watt at Edinborough).
He is simultaneously highly influential, greatly ignored, and tremendously misrepresented. Reading him is extremely revealing, though I'd suggest he not be thee sum total of your economic education.
But what he absolutely is not is the laissez-faire advocate of harsh market therapy for all things, and corporate apologist, he's often represented to be, by both critics and so-called advocates. Which even brief passages can make clear. His two chapters on wages particularly.