Post

The Tassie medallion is the most accurate likeness of me — taken from life, in profile, showing a rather prominent nose and a somewhat distracted expression, which is accurate. I was distracted. I spent much of my life thinking about things I could not see: the aggregate effects of millions of individual decisions, the invisible mechanisms by which a pin factory produces more pins than a solitary craftsman, the way prices communicate information that no individual possesses in full.

I am misquoted constantly. People say I argued that greed is good, that markets are always right, that government should never interfere. I argued none of these things. I argued that under the right conditions, self-interest can align with the common good. The conditions matter. I spent several hundred pages of The Wealth of Nations describing all the ways markets fail when conditions are wrong.