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“Leadership is largely ignored by recent liberal theorists. I suspect that the very idea of leadership has a non-egalitarian and authoritarian quality to it, best left to those (inspired by Max Webber) with a fascination for charisma or revolution; or left to fascists or management consultants and organisational psychologists. But this neglect by liberal theorists comes at a cost. Institutions and procedures are run by imperfect human beings and without ongoing maintenance, care and investment they decay. While I do not claim that 'leadership' is a sufficient response to the challenges of institutional decay and renewal, it may well be a necessary one.”

Quote by Eric Schliesser

Book:The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry
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The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry

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Eric Schliesser

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“Good grief. Here is an eighteenth-century, middle class Scottish professor [Adam Smith] saying that morality is an accidental by-product of the way human beings adjust their behavior towards each other as they grow up; saying that morality is an emergent phenomenon that arises spontaneously among human beings in a relatively peaceful society; saying that goodness does not need to be taught, let alone associated with the superstitious belief that it would not exist but for the divine origin of an ancient Palestinian carpenter.”

EvolutionMoralityAdam Smith
Book:Еволюция на всичко
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“Of, course, Chinese economic developments forms the great background for the rise of research into British political economy of the eighteenth century. Chinese policymakers and academics are increasingly interested in economic growth and the nature of international competition and tensions between the different nations. Hume and Smith discussed these questions in the eighteenth century and were a source of guidance for Great Britain in that transformative period. China has been undergoing a massive transformation from a traditional society to a modern one, from an agricultural society to a commercial one, and needs a new kind of political economy and moral philosophy to underpin this. The Scottish thinkers, Hume, Smith and Ferguson and their contemporaries debated political and economic problems and also reflected on the most appropriate ethic for the emergence of commercial society. One of the most striking features of their advice wa that it did not lead to the sort of violent revolution often associated with the French Enlightenment philosophers. On the contrary, they managed to contribute to the development and progress of Great Britain without aligning themselves with revolutionary movements. It is this aspect of their thinking that makes them attractive to many in contemporary China.”

ChinaPolitical EconomyAdam SmithDavid HumeScottish Enlightenment
Book:The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry
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“The Adam Smith that we know today was shaped by his early life and education in Kirkcaldy and Glasgow. As a bright young man he was able to benefit from gifted teachers, to read widely, and to discuss what he read with the students he spent time with. Smith clearly loved the school, the university, and the clubs and societies in Glasgow and Eddinburgh. They shaped his thinking. But we should also remember that, for all his sociability, Smith also loved to be on his own. When it came time to write the Wealth of Nations he returned to his mother's home and to the solitude of Kirkcaldy. Here he was able to arrange his thoughts during long walks on the beach. It is no surprise that a major section of Book V of the Wealth of Nations ended up being about education. Smith's own education and experience as a teacher shaped his thinking and awareness of how important education is to society.”

EducationAdam SmithKirkcaldyUniversity Of Glasgow
Author:Craig Smith
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“There is a story that George Stigler, one of the leading lights of the Chicago School of economists, gave a seminar at the University of St Andrews on Adam Smith. His opening words, "Adam Smith is alive and well, and living in Chicago," invited the heckle, "And how is the prisoner?" Given that as well as being a formidable historian of economics, Stigler was also a fabulist, the story may have got better in the telling. All the economists who have contributed to this volume have rejected the Chicago reading of Smith. Freeing Stigler's prisoner, they have shown that for Smith, it was impossible to separate economy and society. They have noted that where the Chicago reading emphasised his support for free enterprise and accepted the outcome of markets as being the best possible, Smith instead emphasised the importance of 'commercial society.”

Adam SmithChicago School EconomicsGeorge Stigler
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“Today, Adam Smith is famous as the father of capitalism and an advocate of a central tenet of free market thought: that greed is supposedly good and it drives markets. This was an idea pushed by neoliberal economists, inspired by Friedrich Hayeck and Milton Friedman, who had no knowledge of the history of moral philosophy, or of Scotland. What they missed is that no gentleman of his time could ever espouse greed, least of all a professor of moral philosophy. Indeed, Adam Smith recognized greed as an economic driver, and saw it as necessary, but also realized that it was a problem for society. His work was not an espousal of greed, but rather a response to it. His work was an attempt to find a way to reign in commercial greed to support the agrarian order, which he believed to be inherently more productive than business.”

GreedNeoliberalismMoral PhilosophyAdam SmithFriedrich HayekMilton Friedman
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“...the idea that Smith can somehow be seen as representative of modern capitalism is a stretch. He was a man of his time, in the very particular society of oligarchic, 18th century Scotland. It was a world in which he thrived precisely by not fighting the status quo, but rather by making a proposal for harnessing greed, while keeping merchants in their social place and celebrating the ruling class of the time, and trying to envision a way in which it could play a part in a modernizing economy. In many ways, he got it right. While capitalism flourished in 18th century Scotland, the landed elite remained firmly in place and has managed to do so to this very day. In that aspect, Smith was quite visionary.”

CapitalismScotland18th CenturyAdam SmithOligarchs
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“Reading The Wealth of Nations as an attack against lobbying from special interest groups and cronyism suggests that for Smith the violence and inefficiencies of rent seeking mercantilist policies cause harm and are unjust. For Smith, rent seeking and state capture by special interest groups is not only inefficient, but uses the (actual) "blood and treasure" of fellow citizens to enrich a few merchants under the false pretence of enriching the country. The Wealth of Nations can therefore be read as a moral condemnation of mercantilist policies: unjust policies are also inefficient policies.”

LobbyistsLobbyingSpecial Interest GroupsAdam SmithCronyismRentier ClassMercantilismState Capture
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“Ultimately, the most powerful way to rebalance the interests of private owners and the common good is by shifting the focus towards taxes on wealth - that is, asking those who have accummulated substantial assets down the years (or with inherited wealth, down the centuries) to make a fairer contribution. The case is indisputable: since 2008, average earnings have hardly risen, while the amount of wealth held by the better-off has sky-rocketed. Clearly paying for shocks such as the 2008 crash or the Covid-19 pandemic should not fall solely on those dependent on their immediate income. A Land Value Tax could also play an important role: a policy that would be difficult to evade, and would tackle the vast windfall profits that come from the development of land. It's an idea that has long enjoyed support from all sides of the political spectrum, including Winston Churchill, as well as from economists as divergent as Milton Friedman, Adam Smith and J.K. Galbraith. Given its elegant simplicity and essential fairness, the fact that it has not been introduced in England is a case-book example of the landowners' ability to block reform.”

Adam SmithWealth AccumulationWinston ChurchillLand OwnershipMilton FriedmanTaxation PolicyJ K GalbraithLand Value Taxation
Book:Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story
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“Samuel Gregg: Smith’s experiments have also provided considerable evidence that, as he wrote in a 1994 paper, “economic agents can achieve efficient outcomes which are not part of their intention.” Many will recognize this as one of the central claims of The Wealth of Nations, the book written by Smith’s famous namesake two and a half centuries ago. Interestingly, Adam Smith’s argument was not one that Vernon Smith had been inclined to accept before beginning his experimental research. As the latter went on to say in his 1994 paper, fey outside of the Austrian and Chicago traditions believed it, circa 1956. Certainly, I was not primed to believe it, having been raised by a socialist mother, and further handicapped (in this regard) by a Harvard education.” Given, however, what his experiments revealed about what he called “the error in my thinking,” Smith changed his mind. Truth was what mattered—not ego or preexisting ideological commitments.”

TruthSocialismHarvardAdam Smith
Book:The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
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“In his 2001 book, Economics as Religion, economist Robert Nelson recounted the ways in which economics came to operate in society with its own religion-like structure. Nelson argues that modern economics has operated in many ways as a secularized version of Protestant theology in which the primary evil is economics scarcity and in which deliverance from this evil (and the attainment of heaven on earth) will come through application of economic science to promote efficiency (and fairness) in production and distribution. In this worldview, economists, as technical advisors to governmental managers, serve as a new “scientific” priesthood effecting a secular salvation of human society through the application of constructivist reason, the sort of reasoning that seeks to deliberately design choices and institutions to generate what are perceived as “optimal” outcomes. Here, then, within the very discipline to which Vernon Smith has devoted his life’s work, there seems to be a persistent tendency if not to outright materialism then to a reduction of human rationality within constructivist constraints. As Smith acknowledges, “predominantly, both economists and psychologists are reluctant to allow that naive and unsophisticated agents can achieve socially optimal ends without a comprehensive understanding of the whole, as well as their individual parts, implemented by deliberate action. There is no magic.”

ReligionEconomicsOptimizationAdam SmithRobert Nelson
Book:The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reflections on Faith, Science, and Economics
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