- Capitalism and Alternatives -

In the other corner: Adam Smith

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on October 31, 1999 at 18:26:24:

In Reply to: Plutocrats, unite! You have nothing to lose... posted by Frenchy on October 29, 1999 at 11:01:08:

: : SDF: Yeah, I'd like to know why the defenders of plutocracy, DonS and Frenchy and DrWhatever etc. think the rich are their best buddies. Respondents, form a queue.

: Your terrific at distorting others views. Congratulations.

: It'd be a lot more accurate though to say that Frenchy, for one, gives credit where credit is due. Example? How about that 'schmuck' Donald Trump for starters? I don't know what his pedigree is, and don't particularly care. His talent is not the endurance to stand in front of a Bridgeport all day, or to change tires. His talent is to organize, take risks, have a vision that most cannot concieve. Oh, and provide hundreds if not thousands of jobs. For those things he deserves credit. Not because he has a gabillion dollars, that's just democracies way of approving of what he does; ie; people voting with their pocket books, ie; economic democracy.

SDF: i.e plutocracy. In circumstances like these, I really like reading Adam Smith:

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate roduce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations
-Adam Smith, from p. 1 of The Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).

Note that Smith did not say that "Donald Trump," or "King George III," or any other such plutocratic mover of money or soldiers, is the "fund" responsible for "the necessaries and conveniences of life," but rather "labour". Smith, unlike the crop of apologists currently gracing McSpotlight with their presence, gives credit where credit is due.


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