Setting the record straight on Adam Smith and pursuit of self-interest.
The short quotation from Adam Smith refering to the famously misunderstood example of the “butcher, brewer, and baker” in Wealth Of Nations. The quotation has nothing to do with selfishness by only focussing on their own self-interest. I have demonstrated this many times on Lost Legacy. It is about how people try to co-operate in markets by mediating their self-interests in their behaviours by using ‘persuasion’ and ‘bargaining’ and by each addressing their potential partner’s self-interest, not just their own. Th do this by trying to show how it is in their partner’s interest to co-operate on acceptable terms that addresses sufficient of their partner’s self interests for them to conclude an acceptable bargain that meets some (maybe, to all) of their initial views on their self-interest (see Wealth Of Nations, Book 1, chapter 2, paragraph 2). It is in this manner that people exchange things they have for other things they want - implicitly: 'IF you give me some of what I want that you have, THEN I shall give you in exchange, some of the things that you want, which I have'. This is the self-interested bargainer's conditional proposition: 'If, Then'.Adam Smith's Lost LegacyGavin Kennedy
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