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petrea_mitchellIt's the last one! Except for the wrap-up post! Yay!
Placed behind a cut because it gets very long, and also so that I can give you this warning: Libertarians and business conservatives who have been raised to think of Smith as one of their heroes may find some of the material that follows to be upsetting.
Chapter I, Part I: Division of labor and advances in technology mean that a specialized military eventually becomes necessary. Standing armies are preferable to militias, though Smith allows that another year of fighting in North America and the colonial militias will probably be as practiced as a real army.
Speaking of America:
Chapter I, Part II: The machinery of justice tends to evolve once a society develops inequality and the rich need to protect their property from the poor. (Yes. Yes, he says exactly that.) Justice is initially delivered depending on who can pay for it, but eventually civilizations tend to think better of it and start paying judges salaries to give them some independence from the executive branch.
Chapter I, Part III, Article I: Infrastructure is a Good Thing and therefore governments should build it. Who should get the tolls and perform maintenance depends on the incentives for keeping it in good repair, but local authorities are better than central ones in this case.
Unnumbered section on public companies: Companies with publicly traded stock are THE WORST. Just look at all the terrible and money-losing escapades of the Royal African Company, the South Sea Company, etc.
Chapter I, Part III, Article II: The only good way to fund higher education is for students to pay their selected teachers directly, and even then all this artsy-fartsy philosophical stuff makes it pointless anyway. Universal education of the very young is a good idea, though, if it could just focus more on practical matters.
Here's the 18th century version of "Everyone should learn to code":
Chapter I, Part III, Article III: Separation of church and state is an excellent thing. If no particular church is supported by the state, they can all compete freely for followers, and the only possible result is a high degree of tolerance.
Chapter I, Part III, Article IV: If you're going to have a monarch, be prepared to shell out for some fancy living.
Chapter II, Part I: Governments can make some money off of land holdings, but they tend to be poorly managed.
Chapter II, Part II: So, taxes, then! Taxes should be equitable, predictable, easy to pay, and efficiently collected.
Many forms of tax are examined. Second-order effects are sometimes traced to show someone else "really" paying and sometimes not, in support of unstated but clear moral judgements about who ought to or deserves to pay. Anyway, the verdict is: taxes on rental income good; taxes on wages or capital gains bad; excise taxes bad unless the government really needs the income, in which case, fiiiiiine, whatever; estate taxes bad; sales tax or VAT fine as long as it isn't levied on everyday necessities; allowing different parts of your country to set their own tax rates very bad.
Chapter III: Nations can go into debt during wartime as long as they can climb back out of it during times of peace. But they shouldn't do it by putting more money in circulation. In conclusion, tax those ungrateful colonies to make up what Britain just spent hanging on to them in the Seven Years' War, or cut them loose and see how they like it.
Appendix: Here are some figures about the Scottish herring trade.
Placed behind a cut because it gets very long, and also so that I can give you this warning: Libertarians and business conservatives who have been raised to think of Smith as one of their heroes may find some of the material that follows to be upsetting.
Chapter I, Part I: Division of labor and advances in technology mean that a specialized military eventually becomes necessary. Standing armies are preferable to militias, though Smith allows that another year of fighting in North America and the colonial militias will probably be as practiced as a real army.
Speaking of America:
Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous to liberty. It certainly is so, wherever the interest of the general and that of the principal officers are not necessarily connected with the support of the constitution of the state. ... [W]here the military force is placed under the command of those who have the greatest interest in the support of the civil authority, because they themselves have the greatest share of that authority, a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty.
Chapter I, Part II: The machinery of justice tends to evolve once a society develops inequality and the rich need to protect their property from the poor. (Yes. Yes, he says exactly that.) Justice is initially delivered depending on who can pay for it, but eventually civilizations tend to think better of it and start paying judges salaries to give them some independence from the executive branch.
Chapter I, Part III, Article I: Infrastructure is a Good Thing and therefore governments should build it. Who should get the tolls and perform maintenance depends on the incentives for keeping it in good repair, but local authorities are better than central ones in this case.
Unnumbered section on public companies: Companies with publicly traded stock are THE WORST. Just look at all the terrible and money-losing escapades of the Royal African Company, the South Sea Company, etc.
Chapter I, Part III, Article II: The only good way to fund higher education is for students to pay their selected teachers directly, and even then all this artsy-fartsy philosophical stuff makes it pointless anyway. Universal education of the very young is a good idea, though, if it could just focus more on practical matters.
Here's the 18th century version of "Everyone should learn to code":
If in those little schools the books, by which the children are taught to read, were a little more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little smattering of Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them; they were instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics, the literary education of this rank of people would perhaps be as complete as it can be. There is scarce a common trade which does not afford some opportunities of applying to it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which would not therefore gradually exercise and improve the common people in those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime as well as to the most useful sciences.
Chapter I, Part III, Article III: Separation of church and state is an excellent thing. If no particular church is supported by the state, they can all compete freely for followers, and the only possible result is a high degree of tolerance.
Chapter I, Part III, Article IV: If you're going to have a monarch, be prepared to shell out for some fancy living.
Chapter II, Part I: Governments can make some money off of land holdings, but they tend to be poorly managed.
Chapter II, Part II: So, taxes, then! Taxes should be equitable, predictable, easy to pay, and efficiently collected.
Many forms of tax are examined. Second-order effects are sometimes traced to show someone else "really" paying and sometimes not, in support of unstated but clear moral judgements about who ought to or deserves to pay. Anyway, the verdict is: taxes on rental income good; taxes on wages or capital gains bad; excise taxes bad unless the government really needs the income, in which case, fiiiiiine, whatever; estate taxes bad; sales tax or VAT fine as long as it isn't levied on everyday necessities; allowing different parts of your country to set their own tax rates very bad.
Chapter III: Nations can go into debt during wartime as long as they can climb back out of it during times of peace. But they shouldn't do it by putting more money in circulation. In conclusion, tax those ungrateful colonies to make up what Britain just spent hanging on to them in the Seven Years' War, or cut them loose and see how they like it.
Appendix: Here are some figures about the Scottish herring trade.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-31 07:47 pm (UTC)I must say, the idea that armed force in the hands of the civil authorities can never be dangerous to liberty has proven optimistic!