One aspect of the present paper is to draw out the Adam Smith in Friedrich Hayek. I suggest that common economic talk of market communication, market error and correction, and policy error and correction invokes a spectatorial being and appeals to our sympathy with such being. Behind such common...

Jordan Peterson says that postmodernists say no interpretation is better than another. Hmm. I would no sooner identify Peterson's adversaries as those who have been misled by "postmodernism" than I would identify them as misled by "sustainability," "diversity," "multiculturalism," or...

Scholars distinguish between gratitude, which involves not only appreciation of benefit but a positive feeling directed to the benefactor, from gratefulness, which does not necessarily involve any benefactor, much less a feeling toward one (‘I am grateful for the warm sunshine.’). I suggest...

A group of scholars, including myself, have elaborated a tri-layered understanding of justice in Adam Smith (commutative, distributive, and estimative). Here I go beyond the matter of Smith’s understanding of justice, to ask: How did he discourse about justice? Does he instruct us in the...

This paper explores concepts under a rubric termed “jural,” the meaning of which is differentiated from “legal.” Within the conceptualization of the modern nation-state, there are two categories of jural relationships. In the first, both parties have equal jural standing (equal-equal),...

In Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith reasons about how a change in one thing, A, is attended by a change in another thing, B. In expounding on such bivariate relationships, Smith sometimes seems to go out of his way to posit a state of the world in which the relationship would break down....

In Smith there is something of a contrariety, or double doctrine, on justice: Much of his writing leaves us with the impression that we should use justice and its cognates to mean commutative justice, and only that. But much also authorizes the conclusion that we should embrace and talk of three...

The justification for any public policies are dissolving as technology advances. New detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, marine farming, and auto emissions, making property-rights solutions viable. Information becomes more accessible and user-friendly,...

At a sandwich shop I used to frequent in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, there was a video game - Galaga, I believe - with a sign on it saying, Must be 16 years old to play. Evidently someone felt that video playing by youngsters was getting out of hand. In truth, playing Galaga can, in the case of...

Consumers want products and services that are safe and of good quality. Corresponding to such demand is the demand for assurance, before the fact, that the quality and safety will be as promised. This demand for assurance creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to profit by providing assurance -...