Adam Smith, the pioneer of laizes faire economics, says that the invisible hand at work is how the market corrects itself. When government steps in, there is a third party that is inflicting a viewpoint onto the market that can not necessarily right the market. The idea that we have the knowledge to right the situation and curtail its spiraling effects has made us the ones behind the natural price. Smith acknowledges the fact that humans all act out of self-interest and with the govt. bailing out companies left and right, who's interest is that? I find that Hobbes believes self-interest leads to collapsing institutions and a desecration of resources. Therefore, we need to realize the self- interests of many, leads to the demise of many, Hobbes would argue. The self-interest of our country has made many poor countries worse off and nobody is liable as corporations are the ones running America. Business and government act in favor of one another and are on each other's sides for what is in one self interest is in the benefit of the others. Hobbes argues that this will ultimately lead to the demise of our civilization as selfish, competitive human beings all try and reach for that gold while not realizing that it's unattainable and all the people they have stepped on are the ones making the ladder.

Joe Civetz

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Sky Madden Prof. Fairweather Monday and Wednesday 6 to 9:10pm ETHICS

The idea behind the Free Market is that governmental bodies do not determine the prices of products forged by makers and sellers. In order for there to be a functioning Free Market there must exist some level of formidable trust within the traders of the market. If the traders taint the prices or misrepresent worth or cost to hinder a fellow tradesman in efforts to gain a lead within the market regulation by government ensue, crushing the freedom of market place. As simple as the idea of a Free Market seem and is much is required of its merchants and farmers alike. If you in turn, introduce Hobbes’s theory of the State of Nature it then becomes hard to imagine a free and functioning Free Market. Hobbes says that every individual has a natural right to do whatever possible to protect their safety and to protect their security. This notion would include those acting as a deceptive tradesman inside the economical realm. If a merchant is suffering and his family is vulnerable he, by Hobbes can rightly lie about a product and over price it as a means to save his safety. This is one instance by the two thinkers Smith and Hobbes complicate each others’ manifestos. Another point of opposition for the two, Smith and Hobbes, is found within Leviathan’s proposition for the three causes of men’s world of conflict: competition. This suggests that Adam Smith’s Free Market could not exist in a state of nature. The conflict given birth by competition ruins Free Market and we can see how difficult it would be to maintain healthy competition or competition within the Free Market unmarred by deception which is allow inside Hobbes’ world but only inevitably so. Lastly as a note of interest, it wasn’t until approximately 100 hundred years after the publishing of Hobbes’s Leviathan that Adam Smith began to shape his economic conceptions.

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