In this week's Normblog Profile, Matthew Yglesias replies to one question as follows:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > That selfishness is more rational than benevolence.But who puts forward this thesis he wants to combat? It seems like a reference to Adam Smith's famous suggestion that:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.This is a widely misunderstood passage. It does not say "It ought not to be from the benevolence...", nor does it say "It would be less rational were it to be from the benevolence...". It says, quite simple, "It is not from the benevolence". This is not a recommendation, nor approval, nor a comment on rationality. It is an observation of fact.
People behave self-interestedly. They just do. They do in every type of social, economic or political system. Self-interest varies, it isn't always economic (status, for example, can be important and can work counter to economic self-interest), it isn't the only factor in human behaviour, but it is always a motivational force in people. And it happens to be the main reason why the butcher bothers to go to work.
Moreover, there's no suggestion in this passage that the tradesmen cannot or do not behave benevolently. It simply says that they don't go to work out of benevolence.
People - like me - who feel Smith was right in this passage are not trying to combat benevolence or advocate selfishness. We're simply observing that, in the human economy as in the natural world, lots of small acts of self-interest combine to form a rich and robust ecosystem.
7 comments:
Yglesias’ reply to the question, “Do you have any prejudices you’re willing to acknowledge?” is also noteworthy. I think it says more than he realises:
“I don’t like businesspeople.”
I’m not quite sure how this avowed dislike of commerce (or of the people who engage in it) squares with his later reply to this: “How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money?”
“I’d travel more and buy some more expensive stuff.”
And now I’m wondering why Norm only mentions winning or inheriting money as options. If earning wealth suddenly were included as an option, the answers might be more revealing.
Nobody earns wealth, David. They win it, inherit it or, if they are businesspeople, snatch it from the bleeding lips of infants.
I assume Norm is asking about the respondent's reaction to a very sudden change in wealth. Yglesias' attitude is harder to understand. I doubt he'd say he dislikes bakers, or potters, or publishers. Well, as a writer he might dislike publishers. But all are businesspeople.
The disdain of a lefty blogger for commerce seems to me to be similar to the distaste felt by a celibate priest for sex.
Perhaps he's thinking of Ayn Rand who was more explicit than Adam Smith on the virtues of "selfishness"
That's possible, TDK, though the Smith quote is so well known that seeing self-interest or selfishness next to benevolence, people tend to think of Smith.
“I doubt he’d say he dislikes bakers, or potters, or publishers. Well, as a writer he might dislike publishers. But all are businesspeople.”
Maybe there’s some unspecified point at which making money becomes distilled evil. Perhaps it occurs around a certain (again, unspecified) level of success. Or maybe it only applies to certain trades. It’s all very mysterious. However it works, I’m guessing Mr Yglesias is immune to any morally corrosive effects.
“The disdain of a lefty blogger for commerce seems to me to be similar to the distaste felt by a celibate priest for sex.”
Pieties, both.
"However it works, I’m guessing Mr Yglesias is immune to any morally corrosive effects."
I'd be willing to up that guess to a wager.
“Do you have any prejudices you’re willing to acknowledge?” Yes, Norm, I tend to assume that elderly Marxists were once Stalinist bootlickers keen to betray western civilisation.
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