Hence the Adam Smith Question: if markets depend on moral sympathy, public virtue, and shared responsibility to function, why do we still pretend that economic life can be governed by self-interest alone?
We don’t is the answer to that one. We slice up life into those things that can be – say the provision of bananas – and those that cannot be – say the provision of the Royal Navy.
And there we are, we’re done.
And surely markets don’t depend on moral sympathy, public virtue, and shared responsibility to function?
They don’t, but they do depend on trust, often but not always, backed up with the resources of the state.
It’s been a while since I read either work but from recollection Smith was scathing around monopolies in general. The notion he would have endorsed Murphy’s plan to introduce state monopolies everywhere is risible in the extreme. The entire post is geared towards you Tim – whether that’s a back handed compliment I’ll leave to you.
Commie dick Murphy couldn’t care less about ‘moral sympathy, public virtue, and shared responsibility.’ He uses those words because YOU care. He’s marketing communism with puppies and polar bears.
150,000,000 dead isn’t enough.
Has he seen how well cultures that depend solely on moral sympathy, public virtue, and shared responsibility function?
They’re all, without exception, shitholes.
He needs to understand that socialism *is not scalable*. it only works in groups small enough to be able to know the members well enough to know who’s carrying their load and who is shirking, who needs help and who is grifting.
And that size is . . . about the size of an extended family. Even communes as small as a couple dozen almost always go under in a few years.
Quite. Socialism requires altruism & altruism’s a rare thing.
If you accept Spud at his own estimation, he’s an altruist. Of course I don’t dismiss the possibility the whole things a gig so he could chisel himself an income. It’s that early period when he was writing tax dodges for the Graun. A Damascene conversion? Or did he just discover there was more money to be made in railing against tax dodgers? Maybe he got far more correspondence disapproving of his advice & realised there was a market he could sell into. Like I’ve often said, maybe he writes what he thinks people want to hear. It’d explain all the inconsistencies. What he’s doing doesn’t require consistency. It’s not expected.
Communes didn’t have the mechanisms that a family has. Shared blood is powerful.
It’s not surprising that socialists would consider that “found family” would work as well. Since they completely discount biology and consider that all of our social mechanisms are arbitrary made up stuff.
Though even families aren’t foolproof. When the state works to undermine families, it’s even worse.