Adam Smith on the Origins of Government

‘What I also understand is that "capitalism" is not an economic system so much as recognition of a fundamental reality: it is the accumulation of "capital" which allows investment, which allows creation.

That such efforts normally fail is simple. That is, it proves very difficult to tell people to "be free" in certain areas but not in others. Sooner or later, they start crossing the regime's red lines!

On the other side I want to argue like here's an Adam Smith quote in it I used. Smith said "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." Smith would have railed against giant corporations if he were alive today. They plunder the world and we fight wars for them like in Iraq.’

Comment
Taking a quotation out of context can always cause misunderstandings. It does so in this case. Smith was not outlining the appropriate policies for civil governments for all time and in no sense did he suggest that the appropriate role of government in modern societies was to suppress the poor. Quite the reverse! His entire approach to modern government was for it to cease intervening on behalf of special interests to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers, the majority of whom were among the poor. He saw commercial society as a road to opulence that would spread its benefits to the family of common labourers...more>>