Adam Smith

To jest bardzo ciekawe, że jeden z ojców kapitalizmu przewidział, że w niektórych aspektach kapitalizm trzeba chronić przed samymi kapitalistami, bo inaczej doprowadzimy się do feudalizmu

Cyt:

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce"

Myślę, że warte przypomnienia dla naszych wilków spekulantów neoliberałów. Szczególnie dla Pana Midela i jemu podobnych, ale też dla naszego kochanego rządu, że może warto wymyślić jakiś mechanizm, który skłoni ludzi do inwestycje w coś pożytecznego, a nie w stojący beton.

Zabawne jest też to, że mamy taki klimat obecnie, że ojcowie kapitalizmu byliby nazywani lewakami w dzisiejszym świecie gdyby nasze orły ich posłuchały w niektórych tematach.

In her maiden speech today, National MP Katie Nimon was given a standing ovation with her evocative plea “I strongly believe in Adam Smith’s theory of The Invisible Hand”.

It made me wonder why is that so? Could it be that the way Smith describes landlords as being proud, unfeeling, self-consuming and vulgar presents an uncanny resemblance to her party’s typical supporter with which she is familiar? Or the way he later refers to the poorest as mean peasants, whose role it is to look after the landlord’s palace and in vain expect humanity or justice encapsulates beautifully party policy as distant and unrelated as encouraging smoking and funding landlord tax cuts? Is it that her strong belief is rooted in the truth she feels by his description of the rich as naturally selfish, rapacious and with the sole ends of thousands they employ the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires? Might she even find comfort in the resemblance that bears to the leadership under which she serves?

I am hoping in the next speech she we will give a thorough rundown and attract parliamentarians’ more specific raucous applause.

I’m applying to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University so I thought I’d read Wealth of Nations as I’ve been told it is one of the foundations of modern economics. However, I’ve now read online that much of it is outdated and incorrect (I presumed this to an extent but I’ve read people suggesting it’s not even worth reading), which parts of it are actually incorrect? I’m midway through Book 2 btw.

So is Adam Smith right? Landlords that don’t labor are parasites?

Builders get paid to build the property, the super and others get paid to maintain it. A manager get paid to do all the paperwork and legal stuff.

The landlord just collects a paycheck gotten from wealth extraction of the work done by tenants.

It makes me wonder if tenants were given 2 options:

1. pay rent every month and landlord handles everything for you regarding maintenance and legal stuff for the land

2. don’t pay rent and pay out of pocket whenever something comes up

It seems to me like number 2 would be the easily preferable choice, cause usually there’s not much to maintain, and if there’s ever something expensive then the building tenants can pool money together to pay for it.

There’s no way it’d more than all the combined months of rent that have to be paid endlessly.

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable"

"Though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he, in reality, costs him no expence, the value of those wages being generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed."

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have property against those who have none at all"

"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition … is … the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments"

"It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxurious and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people that ought ever to be taxed"

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind"

"The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the publick … The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order … ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined … with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public"

"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion"

"With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches"

"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many"

"The property which every man has is his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable"

His spirit taunts you from beyond the grave, ye bootlickers !

If you've ever had the chance to read Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (consider it required reading for Capitalists and Socialists alike) you will invariably notice Smith's assumption that exchange amongst individual is inevitable and thus money to facilitate said trade is as well. This is one of those things that makes sense on the surface: if I am a butcher and I want a pair of shoes, a pair of shoes isn't worth a whole pig, and I can't trade part of a pig, because then I have to kill the pig. Thus the butcher would use a medium of exchange earned from selling pork to buy a pair of shoes. Many economists and lay-person alike have used this argument to demonstrate that since this form of commerce is so universal and obvious that Capitalism itself must be a given in human society.

But what if this assumption is wrong.

Anthropological research has revealed that not all societies use any medium exchange within their social group. So how do they trade? Simply put, they don't. Lets go back to our barefoot butcher example. A butcher needs a pair of shoes. So what does he do? He simply goes to the cobbler and gets a pair of shoes. That's it. So why does the cobbler not ask for something in return? Because the cobbler doesn't have to. If the cobbler requires meat, he will ask butcher when the time comes.

This model is known as "social credit" in which everyone is indebted to everyone else and thus do not have to engage in trade or bartering. There is a big emphasis on exhibiting behavior that does not lead to social ostracism, thus people are encouraged to give when asked to and not take more than what they need. Everyone knows everyone else, so as an individual you want to stay in everyone's good graces so the system doesn't break down.

Now I know what you are thinking "this would never work on a large scale" and in today's society you are probably right. But we have examples of large-scale societies who did not use a medium of exchange. Command economics like ancient Egypt did not use coinage. In the Incan Empire, people paid taxes by providing labor, goods, or acting as a military levy. Even in feudal Europe, rents to feudal lords were usually paid in grain or cattle.

We tend to see coinage appear in societies that trade extensively with outsiders or engage in warfare. Its hard to maintain a social contract with people you don't know, so parties would use a medium of exchange. In ancient Mesopotamia, coins were used in between bureaucratic offices. A bureaucrat would collect taxes in grain and then issue coins with a set value to another office in order to pay for foreign goods or pay the army, which were exchanged for their value in grain. Keep in mind, Egypt, which existed at the same time, didn't use this method.

So what's the point? We need to be careful when we say something in economics is "inevitable" or "eternal." In the case of money, neither is true. For my capitalist friends, if you say "trade and bartering is as old as humanity, thus money is inevitable" know that that is not true. And for my Socialist friends, when you say "money is just something we made up" you're probably more right than you realize.