What’s Wrong With Capitalism According to Adam Smith

He never said greed was good; Michael Douglas did.

Andrew Cheng
The Apeiron Blog
Adapted by the author. Sources by Donovan Reeves on Unsplash and Jp Valery on Unsplash

Capitalism gets a bad rap nowadays.

I get it. The top 1% have embroiled themselves in a pitiful space race while much of the world struggles to pay rent. We now have more than enough food to feed 10 billion people, yet children are still starving.

Worst yet, capitalism seems to have bred a special kind of a**hole — the likes of Kevin O’Leary and Donald Trump. Bombastic narcissists who are born with all the advantages of the world and yet still insist they’re self-made; middle-aged fanboys who saw the movie Wall Street and decided they wanted to cosplay as Gordon Gekko for the rest of their lives.

When criticized, they would cite the virtues of the free market. While few do so explicitly nowadays, they’d often fall back on the teachings of Adam Smith.

I, too, want to espouse Adam Smith’s teachings, but not in the way most people think.

Almost every adult recognizes Smith as the “father of capitalism.” But, if he were alive today, he’d see himself somewhat differently. He was first and foremost a moral philosopher.

Smith was the author of another book — The Theory of Moral Sentiments, one that he had written before The

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