Word: smithian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...comes to the war on drugs, Morales is just a realist: he defends the right of Bolivians to make a decent living, something already quite hard in the so-called “developing” latitudes. Poor peasants with few acres of land grow coca because of basic Smithian economics: the market equilibrium price is far higher than other crops like coffee or soy. Washington’s “Apocalypse Now”-like burning of fields might work in areas with violent seditious guerrillas like Colombia’s FARC, but in Bolivia, aerial spraying destroys...
...follow conventional wisdom, Apple is doing it all wrong. Try to do everything at once, and you won't do anything well. Worse, the way Apple operates is not how you're supposed to foster innovation, or not in the U.S., anyway. Under the traditional, capitalist, Adam Smithian model, new and better things arise as a result of freedom and open competition, but Apple is essentially operating its own closed miniature techno-economy. What is this, Soviet Russia? Why not license Mac OS X to Dell, see what hardware it comes up with and let the market decide whose ride...
Ellison is not a man to shy away from his own Smithian self-interest, and he believes the profit motive could be the best tool for solving the world's problems--more effective than government or private philanthropy. "Which did more for the world?" he asks. "The Ford Motor Co. or the Ford Foundation?" He shakes his head. "That's an interesting question...
...answering that question, Banuri says, "The radical view is quite coherent and consistent." That radical view, however, does not necessarily equate with Marxism. "I would think of myself as a Marxist only as I would think of myself as a Newtonian or for that matter as a Smithian. I think Marx tried to present a scientific view of society. So have the Neoclassicals. What they have tried to do is abstract from society and find the most important relationships that define how society operates. These people are looking at different relationships and that is why they often come up with...
...itself as the drive for profit and produces that great marvel, the self-regulating market. If consumers are free to spend their money any way they wish, and businessmen can compete uninhibitedly for their favor, then capital and labor will flow "naturally" (a favorite Smithian word) into the uses where they are most needed. If consumers want, say, more bread than is being produced, they will pay high prices and bakers will earn high profits. Those profits will lure investors to build more bakeries. If they wind up turning out more bread than consumers want to buy, prices and profits...