526. Was Adam Smith Really a Right-Winger?

526.亚当·斯密真的是右翼分子吗?

Freakonomics Radio

社会与文化

2022-12-15

1 小时 9 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Economists and politicians have turned him into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say the right has badly misread him. Prepare for a very Smithy tug of war. (Part 2 of “In Search of the Real Adam Smith.”)

单集文稿 ...

  • What do you think Adam Smith would make of the UK economy today?

  • Oh, golly.

  • He'd think it's in a great pickle.

  • I think he'd actually think that it's one of the most tyrannical systems that he'd ever discovered.

  • The idea that government should be taking 40% of the national income in taxes of one sort and another.

  • Not just direct taxes on income, but taxes on everything you spend, taxes on air travel, all sorts of hidden taxes, taxes on work, taxes on jobs.

  • He would think that this is the most oppressive regime in the whole world.

  • That is Eamonn Butler.

  • I'm a director of the Adam Smith Institute, which is a free market think tank based in London.

  • In our previous episode, in Search of the real Adam Smith, we traveled to Scotland to see where Smith was born and spent most of his life.

  • That's the pulpit.

  • So he would have been baptized in.

  • The front of the church there.

  • He seems to have been a sociable individual who took a full part in the life of the university.

  • Today, we're down in London.

  • We are trying to figure out how a moral philosopher from 18th century Scotland became the patron saint of free market capitalism in the current century.

  • Did Smith, for instance, really see governments as tyrannical?

  • He distrusts politicians, both their abilities and often even their intentions.

  • We'll find out when and where the modern view of Smith gained traction.

  • The Chicago school picked up a few aspects of Smith's thought and made it the whole of Smith's thought.