Take the good with the bad because regular capitalism is not bad. Unfettered capitalism is the problem.
The thing is, unfettered capitalism is basically regular capitalism brought to you by Adam Smith & his successors. Bernard Mandeville, who arguably also described capitalism prior to Smith, called it out for its faults and said that it may only be to the public benefit through careful regulation, whereas Smith thought that greed would somehow regulate itself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith is the one more may have heard of today over Mandeville.
On review, you’re right, but I do think there is a notable ambiguity regarding whatever Smith’s trying to describe with his “invisible hand” concept, which is more of what I was referring to than any sort of magic. An ambiguity which, I think it may be fair to say, is among those misquotings and employed as an argument to defend deregulation and unregulated capitalism.
I’d have to do some further reading to get a better sense of what Smith may have been trying to say with that idea, but at least at a glance it seems I’m not alone in finding it questionable. At best it appears to be the notion of incidental good produced from self-interested endeavors in circumstances of good governance, and to which I think you raise a good point in Smith’s articulation of what prudent governance might look like, e.g.
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market, and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [of employers/dealers that live by profit], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, emphases & bracketed insertion mine for clarity, drawn from earlier portions of the paragraph. Ctrl+F and search this section to verify if concerned.
What he described by the invisible hand was the idea of systematic forces - essentially emergent properties of a system.
They’re patterns in a system that emerge not from individual actors, but from the interaction of many actors. No one has to enforce the behaviors - hell every individual actor in the system might be against it - but the system itself creates certain forces
Smith approaches the concept awkwardly and very cautiously - he probably was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic, or that the concept would be controversial
The thing is, unfettered capitalism is basically regular capitalism brought to you by Adam Smith & his successors. Bernard Mandeville, who arguably also described capitalism prior to Smith, called it out for its faults and said that it may only be to the public benefit through careful regulation, whereas Smith thought that greed would somehow regulate itself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith is the one more may have heard of today over Mandeville.
Smith described capitalism, he didn’t idolize it.
He’s often misquoted, but skim through the wealth of nations. It most certainly does not say unregulated capitalism just works out magically.
It describes how capitalism works, and heavily implies the situations where it doesn’t. It’s not subtle about it either
On review, you’re right, but I do think there is a notable ambiguity regarding whatever Smith’s trying to describe with his “invisible hand” concept, which is more of what I was referring to than any sort of magic. An ambiguity which, I think it may be fair to say, is among those misquotings and employed as an argument to defend deregulation and unregulated capitalism.
I’d have to do some further reading to get a better sense of what Smith may have been trying to say with that idea, but at least at a glance it seems I’m not alone in finding it questionable. At best it appears to be the notion of incidental good produced from self-interested endeavors in circumstances of good governance, and to which I think you raise a good point in Smith’s articulation of what prudent governance might look like, e.g.
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, emphases & bracketed insertion mine for clarity, drawn from earlier portions of the paragraph. Ctrl+F and search this section to verify if concerned.
What he described by the invisible hand was the idea of systematic forces - essentially emergent properties of a system.
They’re patterns in a system that emerge not from individual actors, but from the interaction of many actors. No one has to enforce the behaviors - hell every individual actor in the system might be against it - but the system itself creates certain forces
Smith approaches the concept awkwardly and very cautiously - he probably was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic, or that the concept would be controversial