{"id":36505,"date":"2018-09-21T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T05:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36505"},"modified":"2018-08-31T09:10:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T13:10:20","slug":"qotd-let-us-abandon-capitalism-and-go-back-to-adam-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/09\/21\/qotd-let-us-abandon-capitalism-and-go-back-to-adam-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Let us abandon Capitalism, and go back to Adam Smith&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>An old friend of mine, among my bosses in late \u2019seventies Bangkok \u2014 Antoine van Agtmael, genuinely admired and loved \u2014 was the genius who invented the expression \u201cemerging markets,\u201d to replace that downer, \u201cdeveloping countries.\u201d (Which in turn had been the euphemism for \u201cbackward countries.\u201d) It was by such creative hocus-pocus that attitudes towards \u201cThird World\u201d investment were dramatically changed, in the era of Thatcher and Reagan. A man  of indomitably good intentions; charitable, selfless, and a brilliant merchant banker; a little leftish in his social and cultural outlook \u2014 I give Antoine\u2019s phrase as an example of the sort of poetry that changes the world. I took pride, once, in editing a book of his astute investment \u201ccase studies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thirty-six years have passed, since in my youth and naivet\u00e9 I was draughting a book of my own on what is still called \u201cdevelopment economics.\u201d (I was a business journalist in Asia then, who did a little teaching on the side.) It seemed to me that \u201cfree enterprise\u201d should be encouraged; that \u201cgovernment intervention\u201d should be discouraged; but that the aesthetic, moral, and spiritual order in one ancient \u201cdeveloping country\u201d after another was being undermined by the success, as also by the frequent failures, not only of foreign but of domestic investors. This bugged me because, like my father before me (who had worked and taught westernizing subjects in this same Third World), my well-intended efforts on behalf of \u201cprogress\u201d were ruining everything they touched; everything I loved.<\/p>\n<p>My attempt to explain this, if only to myself, ended in abject failure to answer my central question: \u201cWhy does capitalist success make the world ugly and its people sad?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Only now do I begin to glimpse an answer; and that part of it could be expressed in the imperative, \u201cLet us abandon Capitalism, and go back to Adam Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>David Warren, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2016\/12\/01\/in-defence-of-economic-backwardness\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;In defence of economic backwardness&#8221;, <em>Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2016-12-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An old friend of mine, among my bosses in late \u2019seventies Bangkok \u2014 Antoine van Agtmael, genuinely admired and loved \u2014 was the genius who invented the expression \u201cemerging markets,\u201d to replace that downer, \u201cdeveloping countries.\u201d (Which in turn had been the euphemism for \u201cbackward countries.\u201d) It was by such creative hocus-pocus that attitudes towards [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25,41],"tags":[1080,782,571],"class_list":["post-36505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-adamsmith","tag-foreignaid","tag-investment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9uN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36506,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36505\/revisions\/36506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}