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  3. Adam Smith, free-market partisan: this image dominates, even in market-weary times. Politicians invoke him as a near-deity. Thin

Adam Smith, free-market partisan: this image dominates, even in market-weary times. Politicians invoke him as a near-deity. Thin

admin2014-06-13  60
问题     Adam Smith, free-market partisan: this image dominates, even in market-weary times. Politicians invoke him as a near-deity. Think tanks use his name as a synonym for free-market policies. So dogmatic is he imagined to be in his famous book "The Wealth of Nations" that the writer-activist Riane Eisler wrote a corrective titled "The Real Wealth of Nations; Creating a Caring Economics. "
    The implication that his economics was uncaring might have disturbed Adam Smith, for he was hardly the man that many now think him to be. While he believed that markets could channel self-interest into efficient aggregate outcomes, he argued that this was no excuse for selfishness: "When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of man-y. " That quotation is not from "The Wealth of Nations," Smith’s best-known work, but from "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," his lesser-known opus. It offers a reminder that Smith was a subtle, complex thinker whose ideas about markets and those who use them would embarrass many of his present-day devotees.
    Smith is often treated like the philosopher of the Goldman Sachs bonus, as the defender of an anything-goes capitalism. But in "Moral Sentiments" he sharply criticizes the idea that self-interest is enough. A healthy society, Smith believed, requires trust, so that bankers lend. It requires sympathy: the book’s first words praise the feelings in every person that "interest him in the fortune of others. " It requires prudence; simplicity, honesty, thrift, the deferral of gratification, industry, a refusal to risk fortune and tranquillity "in quest of new enterprises and adventures. " And it requires regulation, transparency and other mechanisms of fair play. In Smith’s vision, greed is socially beneficial only when properly harnessed and channeled.
    But "Moral Sentiments" does more than just balance our understanding of Smith. It is also a thorough analysis of money and the human character. If "The Wealth of Nations" was Smith the economist describing the workings of the market, "Moral Sentiments" is Smith the social psychologist describing how humans actually employ that market. "To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world?" Smith asks. We ever insist on "bettering our condition," he writes, not out of necessity, not to feed or clothe ourselves, but for vanity: "To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy. " His words seem strangely relevant to this age of elusive dinner reservations and fractional jet ownership.
    Smith saw, as well, how the powerful are encouraged in their vanity by the rest of us: how we puff them up, hang on their deeds, pay more attention to them than to the unfortunate, and gradually make them sense that they can get away with anything. The ambitious man, Smith writes, comes to believe "that the brilliancy of his future conduct will entirely cover, or efface, the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. " It is this sense of impunity that worried Smith about the wealth pursuit. [508 words]
It can be said that "The Wealth of Nations" and "Moral Sentiments" are______.
选项 A、complementary
B、contradictory
C、similar
D、identical
答案A
解析 本题考查推理引申。
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