What is the economy for?
CHINA Hunan Famine 1946: Emaciated boy begging for food in front of black market rice shop during famine. (Photo by George Silk/Life Magazine) by John MacBeath Watkins In Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations , the following passage appears: 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 interest. Smith was a moral philosopher, and what interested him as such was the way a system of values enabled people, entirely without compulsion, to provide for each other. What we expect this system of values to produce is not economic growth, it is our dinner. The object of the system is not to grow the system, it is to serve the needs of its participants. This may seem an obvious and mundane observation, but it seems to get little mention in modern ec...
