The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society

Rasmussen, Dennis C.

doi:10.1515/9780271035093

Cited by 12 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Since that time, scholars of Smith have systematically dismantled the Chicago account of Adam Smith (for example, Winch, 1978;Haakonssen, 1981;Muller, 1993;Fleischacker, 2004;Rasmussen, 2008;Evensky, 2005;McLean, 2006;Liu, 2021;Sagar, 2022). However, this literature, including many moral philosophers but too few economists, has had relatively little influence over economists.…”

Section: Smithian Versus Neoclassical Approaches To Libertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberty and the neoclassical fallacy

Weingast

2023

Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice

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Does liberty matter for economics? To address this question, I distinguish among three different types of liberty: Adam Smith’s, the neoclassical, and the so-called “classical liberal.” They differ in that the neoclassical and the classical liberal perspectives presume the existence, typically without noting it, of the four conditions that comprise the foundation of liberty, namely, secure property rights, enforcement of contracts, absence of government predation, and security. In contrast, Adam Smith sought to explain these foundations. In this article—an extraliterary review of one of the central themes of Acemoglu and Robinson (2019)—I draw the implications of Smith’s approach, and I explain why neoclassical economics—which takes the foundations of liberty as given—is unable to understand the work of Smith on this topic and, hence, on economic development. I also show that the neoclassical and the classical liberal approaches rest on a foundation of magic: they both presume the foundational conditions just noted but fail to explain how they arise. Put simply, the neoclassical approach has no explanation for the origin of liberty or of the mechanisms that sustain it. If markets require the four conditions of the foundation of liberty, then a complete explanation of the origin and development of markets must include an explanation of how these conditions come to hold. The Smithian economic perspective is especially important for today’s developing countries, most of which, at best, struggle to create the four foundational assumptions of liberty.

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Section: Smithian Versus Neoclassical Approaches To Libertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberty and the neoclassical fallacy

Weingast

2023

Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice

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“…Third, I extend Smith's criticisms of machines into the technological present and apply them to some selected contemporary advancements in AI and machine learning. Because Smith is concerned with both overspecialization and opportunities to exercise and develop judgment, the proliferation of machines that lock workers into mind working tasks or that make substitute choices on behalf of individuals can be criticized on Smithian grounds as making workers and users of these devices less than fully human and fully free (Rasmussen 2005). 2 In arguing that the latter criticisms apply just as easily to machines in our own time, I am attempting something like what Adrian Blau calls an "adaptive reading" of Smith's historical, political arguments (Blau,361), seeking first to understand why Smith saw both machines and restrictive legislation as a threat to judgment and freedom, and then to understand how new and different machines might be captured in the breadth of these two different harms combined.…”

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confidence: 99%

Freedom and the Machine: Technological Criticisms in Adam Smith’s Thought

Bunn

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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In conversations surrounding technology and the future of politics, Adam Smith is a valuable resource for evaluating the subtle relationship between technology and freedom. Smith explores the tendency of specialization occasioned by the advancement of machines to cause “mental mutilation” where the worker’s human faculties are stunted through overspecialization or narrowing of scope of opportunities to judge. Smith’s treatment of the development of sympathetic judgment as necessary to the practice of liberty illuminates the depth of the harms caused by this mutilation; it is the very freedom of the worker that is at stake when the development and the exercise of judgment are restricted. Taken together, Smith’s discussion of the advancement of machines and free and independent judgment can aid contemporary thinkers in understanding the relationship between technology and freedom in commercial society, particularly if new technologies substitute for the judgment of the worker or prevent the development of their judgment.

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From Rousseau to Sartre

Honneth

2020

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The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Liberty and the neoclassical fallacy

Liberty and the neoclassical fallacy

Freedom and the Machine: Technological Criticisms in Adam Smith’s Thought

From Rousseau to Sartre

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