{"id":1677,"date":"2009-05-11T12:13:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1677"},"modified":"2009-05-11T12:13:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:13:58","slug":"clean-humane-and-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1677","title":{"rendered":"Clean, Humane, and Long"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.<\/blockquote> <div style=\"padding-left: 50% ;\">Adam Smith<br \/><cite>The Theory of Moral Sentiments<\/cite><br \/>Pt I &sect; I Ch I &para; 1<\/div> <p>Thus begins Adam Smith's first book, in its editions of 1759, 1761, 1767, 1774, 1781, and 1790.  In other words, he was saying this both before and after his more famous work, <cite>An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations<\/cite> (1776, 1778, 1784, 1786, &amp; 1789).  At some point, I may write a lengthier entry on what Smith was <em>doing<\/em> with <cite>the Wealth of Nations<\/cite>, but I wanted to make the point that Smith didn't make his case for a free market based upon a personal belief that one only cared for others based upon their effects on one's own material well-being.  Rather, he made his case (in <cite>the Wealth of Nations<\/cite>) for the optimality of a free market without <em>availing<\/em> himself of the proposition that people otherwise gave a d_mn about each other.  Then, as now, many opponents of a free society held that an economy without extensive state control could <q>work<\/q> only if people had more fellow-feeling than they actually do.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Adam SmithThe Theory of Moral SentimentsPt I &sect; I Ch I &para; 1 [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,318,9,175,4],"tags":[584],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-ethics-philosophy","category-ideology-philosophy","category-philosophy","category-public","tag-adam-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}