Democracy and Consent

Abstract

Much of traditional economic theory is predicated on the proposition that individual self-interest, operating through the self-regulating market mechanism and guided as if by an Invisible Hand, has the welcome if unintended function of significantly advancing the economic welfare of the community. It was clearly this beneficence of outcome which Adam Smith had in mind when he spoke as follows of the appeal to what many would undoubtedly castigate as mean rapacity: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.’¹ Mean rapacity it may be, but the fact remains that filthy pigs can and do produce better ham than may reasonably be expected from, let us say, the polished elegance of the Angora cat: ‘The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.’²