What kinds of limits did Adam Smith think free market capitalism needed?
“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
Human decency. He didn’t conceive of anything that resembles modern “free market capitalism”. His assumptions included the notion that people with wealth would know how to behave decently to the people they employed and relied on - and that this was economically rational behavior, which it is. I can’t find the exact quote I’m looking for, but this will do: “No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.” or “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
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