Samuel Fleischacker

I mean, not always.

You can do antisocial things.

But when people are doing their normal economic transactions, and actually in many other respects as well, they are helping their society whether they know it or not.

And that's the core of the invisible hand.

auction of government favoritism going on in washington what would adam smith think of today's america i think he'd be appalled you couldn't have a more unsmithy and way of running the economy he doesn't trust government figures he thinks they're corrupt and of course we're seeing signs of that there's nothing no policy he hates more than tariffs he thinks that that is really a way of government leaders deciding what

should be imported and what should be exported.

And in all cases, he thinks, tariffs wind up hurting the home economy more than they help.

And that's even true when they're imposed for the sake of defense.

At one point, he says defense is more important than opulence.

So in some cases, maybe a tariff on goods that you need for defense purposes would be legitimate.

But he actually elsewhere says that even those tariffs are unnecessary and they hurt your economy.

That's actually exactly his example.

And he still thinks that you'll probably do better if another company makes those sales cheaper, you should import them.

And at best, you'll do something that's useful for defense purposes, but it will have an economic cost.

In no case does he think that a tariff will actually help the economy.

I certainly agree.

I have to say, it's funny that you say this.

I was just reading yesterday a letter from David Hume to the publisher of both Smith and Gibbon.

They had the same publisher saying, I think that Gibbon will sell much better than Smith because Smith is very hard to read and Gibbon is a nice story, a narrative.

And Strong, the publisher, sort of agrees, but it turns out that Smith was selling better than anybody expected.