The-Morality-of-Capitalism-PDF

them to lobby the state to create cartels, protectionism, and evenwar: “to expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever beentirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that anOceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only theprejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable,the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.” 36The trifling gains of merchants from monopolies are purchasedat the expense of horrific burdens to the public in the case ofempires and wars:[I]n the system of laws which has been established for themanagement of our American and West Indian colonies, theinterest of the home-consumer has been sacrificed to thatof the producer with a more extravagant profusion than inall our other commercial regulations. A great empire hasbeen established for the sole purpose of raising up a nationof customers who should be obliged to buy from the shopsof our different producers, all the goods with which thesecould supply them. For the sake of that little enhancementof price which this monopoly might afford our producers,the home-consumers have been burdened with the wholeexpense of maintaining and defending that empire. For thispurpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars,more than two hundred millions have been spent, and anew debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions hasbeen contracted over and above all that had been expendedfor the same purpose in former wars. The interest of thisdebt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinaryprofit, which, it ever could be pretended, was made by themonopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value ofthat trade or than that whole value of the goods, which atan average have been annually exported to the colonies. 37So Smith’s views on whether, in the words of Gordon Gecko,the fictional character from Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street, “Greedis good” is decidedly “sometimes yes, and sometimes no” (assumingthat all self-interested behavior is “greed”). The difference isin the institutional setting.65