College of Business Administration

Seminar in Business and the Good Society

Discussion Questions for October 10, 2000:

The Worldly Philosophers

1) In 1759, Adam Smith wrote a book "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Theory was an inquiry into the origin of moral approbation and disapproval. How does it happen that man, who is a creature of self-interest, can form moral judgments in which self-interest seems to be held in abeyance or transmuted to a higher place? Smith held that the answer lay in our ability to put ourselves in the position of a third person, an impartial observer, and in this way to form a sympathetic notion of the objective (as opposed to the selfish) merits of a case."
(p.47 Worldly Philosophers)
What do you think about this? How a man feels morality? Is it part of education? Is it inner to our personality? Can we really act with morality?

2) In 1776, he wrote "The Wealth of Nations". "How is it possible for a community in which everyone is busily following his self-interest not to fly apart from sheer centrifugal force? What is it that guides each individual's private business so that it conforms to the needs of the group? With no central planning authority and no steadying influence of age-old tradition, how does society manage to get those tasks done which are necessary for survival?"
(p.54)

3) Do you think, like Smith, that the market is its own guardian, or do you think that the market needs regulation?

4) The assumptions about human nature in a liberal country are that men are good. Do you really agree with this?

5)Was Smith simply looking at the leisure class and ignoring the working class when he professed to see "order, design, and purpose" in daily life? (p.43)

6) The mechanism by which the heedless individual is kept in line with everybody else will affect the mechanism by which society itself changes of the years." (p.54) "The outcome of a certain kind of behavior is a certain social framework which will bring about perfectly definite and foreseeable results" (p. 55)
Do you agree and disagree and why?

7) From page 57: Why are high prices a "self curing disease?" Do you agree or disagree?

8) The law of population states essentially that: The rise in population will eventually force wages back towards subsistence. Smith suggests 200 years as the longest period that society could hope to flourish. If this is true, is the USA on the way down to subsistence wages and more modest profits? (p.67)

9) "If the working of the market is trusted to produce the greatest number of goods at the lowest possible prices, anything that interferes with the market necessarily lowers social welfare." (p.70)
What are some examples of this in current US events?

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