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Implications of Republican sweep, part II

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by piouslion The Weath of Nations still seems to be a good place to get a good handle on the way the world actually works in an economic way. Enlightened Self Interest also seems to be a very powerfull motivator. [/quote] Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is a masterpiece. Crony capitalists claim him as their patron saint and have misled many into believing free markets solve all problems. Smith knew better... [url]www.adamsmith.org/smith/modest-man.htm[/url] Many men cried, as many still do, that Adam Smith offers an apologia for unconscionable aggrandizement by the heartless rich at the expense of the helpless poor. But only those who have not read him can think him inhumane, or cynical, or an apologist for a dog-eat-dog order. It was Adam Smith, not Karl Marx, who warned: "No society can flourish [where] the far greater part of its members are poor and miserable;" or castigated a social order in which "a mother who has borne twenty children" sees only two survive; or said that mass production would brutalize men's minds unless the government prevented it through energetic public education; or showed how road tolls help the rich "at the expense of the poor." Smith knew perfectly well that businessmen are prone to possess "a mean rapacity [and] monopolozing spirit." "People of the same trade seldom meet together," he wrote, without concocting "a conspiracy against the public." In a typically dry, wry, memorable passage, he observed: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." ... "pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men in all ages have wished to see established. The...zeal of religious leaders can be dangerous only where there is...but one sect [or two or three] tolerated in the society. That zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three hundred sects, of which no one would be considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity."
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