> Lawrence Libby, quoting someone or other, wrote:
>
> >>> Anarcho-capitalists share Adam Smith's confidence that somehow private
> >>> interest will translate itself into public good rather than public
> >>> squalor.  They are convinced that the 'natural laws' of economics can do
> >>> without the support of positive man-made laws.  The 'invisible hand' of
> >>> the market will be enough to bring social order.
> This is the cartoon Adam Smith that ruling elites have constructed,
> rather than the more complex one who wrote the following (among others),
> and who NC seems to admire.
>
>
> _________
> Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
> "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
> diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public,
> or in some contrivance to raise prices."  --Adam Smith

        Yeah, you read my mind, Tresy; I noticed this misrepresentation of Adam
Smith as well. I think Adam Smith may have felt that way early in life,
but, from what I know via Chomsky, Smith recanted a lot of his early
views later on.

                        -brian
                        mailto:[log in to unmask]

--
"If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of
human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry, for free
creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive
institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should
maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to
be realized. Now, a federated, decentralized system of free associations
incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be what I
refer to as anarcho-syndicalism. And it seems to me that it is the
appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological
society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the
position of tools, of cogs in a machine. " -- Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT