ofhigh prices in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of the goods bothat home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits.They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. Theycomplain only of those of other people.Such comments amount to a possible explanation for the problems which many identifytoday: high inflation in the non-tradeable sectors of the economy in which profits andhigh-level salaries have been consistently outstripping wage rates over the last twodecades.What would Adam Smith have made of on organisation called the "BusinessRoundtable"? He says that while "the violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind isan ancient evil" it is not as bad as "the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit ofmerchants and manufacturers, who neither are nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind".At the root of Smith's conspiracy theory is the tension that has always existed betweeneconomists and businessmen, a tension accentuated by the fact that governments andjournalists have tended to listen to businessmen as if they were economists.Writers on economics can be classified into three types: businessmen, philosophers andtechnocrats. Smith, the son of a customs official, was a professional philosopher, who,in his later years, also became a customs official. He will have had some knowledge of"the sneaking arts of underling tradesmen"; perhaps enough to permanently sour hisviews about the motives behind the policy arguments of businessmen.It is easy to see where the success of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations lies. Whilethe political theories may not have been entirely new nor revolutionary, they aresuccinctly presented, and, coupled with his observations on humanity, serve as anarrative for modern society. And, while recognition is given to the short-comings of anysystem due to the fallibility of human nature, Smith offers an alternative to the mercantilesystem of his da...
