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James R. Otteson’s Followers (18)
James R. Otteson
More books by James R. Otteson…
“Adam Smith’s political economy is based on a chain of three arguments. The first we called the Economizer Argument, or the claim that each person naturally seeks out the most economical use of the resources available to him to achieve his goals, whatever they are. Whatever one’s goals, one wants to achieve them as efficiently as possible. Smith’s claim is that no one needs to tell us to do this: we are psychologically constructed, as it were, to do so already.”
― The Essential Adam Smith
― The Essential Adam Smith
“When business is conducted honorably, its profit is thus honorable profit and an indicator of the extent to which a firm is providing value to its customers. In this way, I would like to suggest, honorable profit already engages in CSR.”
― Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society
― Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society
“Motivating desire: The “desire for mutual sympathy of sentiments,” which Smith believes all human beings have by nature. Market: What gets exchanged is our personal sentiments and moral judgments. Competition: Because we all want mutual sympathy of sentiments but we cannot all sympathize with everyone’s sentiments, mutual sympathy becomes a sought-after scarce resource. Rules developed: standards of moral judgment and rules determining what Smith calls “propriety” and “merit”—or what we might call virtue and vice, good behavior and bad behavior, and so on. Some of these rules are relatively fixed, like the rules of justice, whereas others, like beneficence, are more variable. Resulting “spontaneous” order: commonly shared standards of morality, moral judgment, manners, and etiquette. Objectivity: the judgment of the impartial spectator, which is constructed inductively on the basis of people’s lived experience with others.”
― The Essential Adam Smith
― The Essential Adam Smith
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