[whb07]

I don't care or need to love you. But I do love my family and myself. So if I need to put on a smile and provide a service or good to you for money to help the people I love I will do it. That's the point of capitalism and free markets.

"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 self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”

[paulsutter]

Something has really changed. In those days the rewards were fairly linear and available everywhere. But now rewards are nonlinear and highly concentrated. Income inequality (and opportunity inequality) will continue to increase, and we probably need to rethink these pithy little axioms that powered the 1900s.

[sonnyblarney]

My belief is that the non-linearity is not due the lack of opportunity of some, but rather the hyper-opportunity of others.

The Silicon Valley isn't really an 'American' centre, it's like a 'Global Centre' where for the first time, indiviuals can have massively disproportionate, global impact.

A doctor may earn a big income, but he can only work on so many patients where as some global firms ... the yields are huge.

Coupled with some automation and large scale immigration of unskilled labour in North America which hurts labour, and outsourcing as well ... it creates a schism.

But remember that on a global basis, billions are being lifted out of utter and abject poverty.

It's mostly a good story.

We have to figure out the working class in advanced nations.

I actually do believe that it's mostly about good jobs, decent services, decent community. That's all there really ever was.

[wallflower]

It's not really hyper opportunity, it is impact.

Impact is the reason why an elementary school teacher gets paid in the low-to-mid 5 figures and a professional ball player can get paid 7 figures. Usually, a school teacher has 20-30 kids in their classroom, while a professional ball player can indirectly influence tens of thousands of kids and adults in their "buying" decisions.

Impact is why Franz Schubert died poor and why Ozzy Osbourne made millions.

Technology can exponentially increase your reach and your impact. Ozzy in the medieval ages would have been just a tale told between towns. If you are a skilled marketer, the Internet is your oyster.

[sonnyblarney]

Yes I agree to all of that except you're missing out on power and market power.

The biggest winners will be investors in tech, not employees, who will do well, but not as well as capital FYI.

[wallflower]

Kind of like a modern update on Karl Marx's "those who own the means of production are the capitalist class". A Modern update because "means of production" back when it was written meant non-human assets (e.g. machines) and the tech industry is clearly harnessing the collective effort of human assets now.

[bobwaycott]

Ah, the old trope of trotting out Adam Smith. It may surprise you to know Smith was concerned about unfettered self-interest and the ways it would damage society. He wasn’t lauding self-interest and praising it as the perfection capitalism claims it to be.

Why not include some more of his gems?

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

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

[apatters]

I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest.

As far as I can tell almost everyone nowadays supports the idea of having markets which are partially free, but subject to some regulation (which was Smith's position). Hardcore Rand and Marx devotees are on the fringe. We are all just debating the degree and character of the regulation.

We debate within Smith's world because he was right and it's easy to see, free markets tend to produce big winners who have so much wealth and power that they eventually find a way to corrupt the market. Regulation should focus on this basic problem: there's no great social upside to a $100B company becoming an $200B company, whereas there's lots of social upside to promoting lots of competition, small firms, and a sense of fairness so that everyone can pursue their self-interest.

[bobwaycott]

> I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest.

I never suggested the parent indicated this.

[threatofrain]

So we are re-hashing the western academic historical debate on economic models of rationality...

[dredmorbius]

Karl Marx:

As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.

...

The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.

...

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.

...

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.

...

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

...

Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.

...

POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of aThe first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-...

[marnett]

genius.