How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

by Russell "Russ" Roberts

Smith concludes that we have just the right amount of concern for others. If we had more, we would find life difficult to bear. Less, and we would be unable to comfort our friends in hard times:

This asymmetry of joy and sorrow—the ease with which we sympathize with success relative to failure—is Smith’s explanation for why the rich and famous receive more attention and create more happiness than the poor and forgotten.

Propriety—that is, acting properly—gains you the approval of those around you, says Smith. But it is not admired or celebrated. For admiration and celebration, you need virtue.

PROPRIETY vs VIRTUE

prudence, justice, and beneficence.

and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine.

“Say little, do much.”

How do you maintain your dignity in an increasingly undignified world?

There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbour, there can be no incitement to do evil to another,

which mankind will go along with, except just indignation for evil which that other has done to us.

the natural preference which every man has for his own happiness above that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can go along with.

When once we begin to give way to such refinements, there is no enormity so gross of which we may not be capable.

Smith’s emphasis on the importance of not deviating from the rules related to justice—always pay your debts, never steal, never betray your spouse—is a crucial aspect of confronting our self-deception. Once we decide that these rules can be relaxed in special circumstances, we’re on the road to finding ways to convince ourselves that what is good for me is good for you, too. Then there will be “no enormity so gross of which we may not be capable.” That’s not a mild warning; it’s a blaring siren.

Smith counsels us to keep the general rules of justice with the “greatest exactness.” They are “accurate in the highest degree, and admit of no exceptions or modifications.”

But there are no rules whose observance will infallibly lead us to the attainment of elegance or sublimity in writing;

And there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence:

What we can learn from Smith is to be aware of how hard beneficence is without those rules.

Those unrealistic, unkeepable rules remind you to watch out for your self-centeredness and keep in mind what the impartial spectator might think of you if he saw you watching the game or mindlessly surfing the Internet when your kid has hit a total dead end on that algebra problem.

Many of your choices can make a contribution, but the difference you will make in the world depends a great deal on your unique gifts and passions and opportunities.

Adam Ferguson, a Scottish contemporary of Adam Smith’s, called the result of human action, but not of human design.

that the sum of negligible forces need not be negligible.

These urges and inclinations are feedback loops that have the potential to create a civilized society. Good behavior is encouraged by approval. Bad behavior is discouraged by disapproval. Those are the incentives created by those around us—the actual spectators of our actions.

The all-wise Author of Nature has, in this manner, taught man to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren; to be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct, and to be more or less hurt when they disapprove of it. He has made man, if I may say so, the immediate judge of mankind; and has, in this respect, as in many others, created him after his own image, and appointed him his vicegerent upon earth, to superintend the behaviour of his brethren. They are taught by nature, to acknowledge that power and jurisdiction which has thus been conferred upon him, to be more or less humbled and mortified when they have incurred his censure, and to be more or less elated when they have obtained his applause.

Not everything that is socially acceptable is a good idea; not everything that is frowned on by your peers is a bad idea.

The virtues of courtesy and kindness and thoughtfulness and compassion and honor and integrity are the virtues we celebrate and applaud. There’s no way to legislate these kinds of behavior. They are loose, vague, and indeterminate.

But our conscience keeps most of us on the straight and narrow.

To commit those acts of cruelty or selfishness is to risk not prison or a fine, but the disapproval of those whose approval we desire—our

We can decide whether to pass on gossip that serves no purpose other than to make us feel superior to someone else.

They say goodness is its own reward. But what Smith is saying is that it’s more than that. Being trustworthy and honest and a reliable friend or parent or child doesn’t just lead to pleasant interactions with people around you. It doesn’t just lead to having a good reputation and being respected. Being trustworthy and honest maintains and helps to extend the culture of decency beyond your own reach.

By refusing to laugh at the joke that comes at someone’s expense, even when it’s oh so clever, you are sparing someone pain and refusing to reward the cruelty of the joke teller. Being good isn’t just good for you and those around you. It encourages others to be good.

for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;

If you want to make the world a better place, work on being trustworthy, and honor those who are trustworthy. Be a good friend and surround yourself with worthy friends. Don’t gossip. Resist the joke that might hurt someone’s feelings even when it’s clever.

Pushing our kids (or our fellow citizens) to do something that’s thought to be desirable sometimes doesn’t merely fail. It sometimes leads us to a worse place than where we started.

They are led by an invisible hand

When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces.

all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

This is the only time that Smith uses the metaphor of the invisible hand in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And he uses it only once in The Wealth of Nations. In both cases, it means that self-interest can lead to benefits for others—hardly

The poorest people in the world today still struggle, no matter their talents, because they are connected economically only to those who are nearby.

We tried buying local once; it was called the Middle Ages.

But we do care about those around us independently of ourselves, sometimes a great deal, and we certainly care, as Smith explains with great precision, about what they think of us.

the danger inherent in that yearning for a politically powerful figure whom we can trust. That danger doesn’t exist just with tyrants—citizens in democracies have similar yearnings.