Exxon-Mobil and Adam Smith

The New York Times (2017-08-22) had a long article on how Exxon scientists had predicted climate change but advertised that the science was unsettled.  See "What Exxon Mobil Didn't Say", https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/exxon-climate-change-.html.

Many employees and other shareholders are suing Exxon-Mobil for hiding the potential loss of assets as less fossil fuels are used.

I submitted the following quote from Adam Smith:

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [those who live by profit], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776

I was surprised that it was approved almost immediately after I posted it.  Often my postings of this quote are ignored.   See http://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/opinion/exxon-climate-change-.html?comments#permid=23840021.

Adam Smith warned "Don’t trust Donald Trump’s appointees!”

 "The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." - pages 142-143, Adam Smith, PDF version of "Wealth of Nations" transcribed by the Gutenberg Project.  You can download a text copy from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300.

Who are this "order of men”?  Those who live by profit.

Who has Donald Trump appointed to be in his administration?  Billionaires who have lived by profit many times over.  Is this a populist government?  Do pigs fly?

Given my small readership, I doubt you can make much influence.  But who knows how much influence you might have by passing this on to your Senators and Representatives?

The above quote originally appeared in “The Invisible Adam Smith”, 2012-10-25 Only 146 have viewed this page to date.  I feel like I’m just blowing in the wind.  But, Bob Dylan wrote, “The answer is blowin’ in the wind, my friend.”

TRUTH or truth?

TRUTH is what some assert with certainty but with no coherent justification.  TRUTH cannot be challenged.

Truth is what people strive for with questions and tests; truth may never be fully achieved but enough has been discovered to offer a guide to life or improvement of lives.

One TRUTH is that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.  The truth is that the Bible offers many moral teachings even though it contains descriptions of many impossible events or even justifies bad deeds.

Did God on the sixth day create “man in his own image, … male and female created he them”?  Or did he create only Adam and then when Adam grew lonely, he created Eve from Adam’s rib.  I would think it would take more than a few days for Adam to grow lonely for a companion.

Is the “Great Flood” a recounting of some catastrophic flood in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in which some few had the foresight to build boats for their family and cattle, or was it a great flood to destroy all the “wickedness”, including babies?  Considering that the depth of the waters was 15 cubits (22-1/2 feet), it was probably the former.  Flood stages of over 20 feet are all too common even now.  The truth is that it is important to be just and that it is important to prepare for disaster.

Is it TRUTH that God let Satan bring many calamities upon Job, or is it truth that bad things happen to good people?  Certainly a just God would not let so many innocent people be killed to test one man, especially if God knows everything?

Is it TRUTH that heretics should be burned at the stake?  It is truth that the Bible only mentions “heretic” once.  “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject” (Epistle to Titus, 3:10).  I don’t think “reject” meant to kill, but rather it meant to shun.

Is it TRUTH that Islam is a militant religion set on converting all to Islam?  It is truth that Mohammed and his followers had to defend themselves against the polytheists of Mecca who considered the Muslims a threat.  It is also truth that many Muslim-dominant cultures had a mix of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

“Those who believe, and those who are Jewish, and the Christians, and the Sabeans - any who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously will have their reward with their Lord; they have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.” - Talal Itani. “Quran In English. Modern English Translation. Clear and Easy to Understand”.

The Sabeans were a culture in South Arabia; this is supposedly where the Queen of Sheba came from, she who visited King Solomon. 

You can get many versions of the Qur’an from the iBook store and other sources.  However, like the Bible, it takes much reading to understand what is meant.

Consider “simple” documents like the “Declaration of Independence” and the “Constitution”.

Is it TRUTH that they are clear and unambiguous?  It is truth that people are still arguing over them over two hundred years later.  It is truth that what one Supreme Court decides may be overturned by another Supreme Court? For example, “Separate but Equal” was overturned by “Brown vs. Board of Education”.

Is it TRUTH that the United States is a Christian nation blessed by God?  It is truth that many of the signers of the “Declaration of Independence” or the “Constitution of the United States” attended Christian Churches.  It is truth that the “Declaration of Independence” mentions “Nature’s God” and the “Protection of Divine Providence”.  But it is also truth that the “Constitution” uses no words or phrases involving any deity.  It is truth that the United States took land from Christian Cherokees and others because white men wanted the gold that was found in Georgia.  So much for the “Protection of Divine Providence” for these Christians.

Is it TRUTH that Adam Smith advocated totally free markets?  It is truth that he used “free market” once and only once in “Wealth of Nations”.  But it is also truth that the heavily regulated market was brought about by the woolen manufacturers.  They asked for and received from Parliament many regulations that would keep the price of wool down so that their costs would be down and their profits up.  It is also truth that even today “Free Marketers” lobby for laws that are beneficial to them and detrimental to others.

Is it TRUTH that voters “decided”?  By the time you read this, the Iowa caucuses will have been held.  It is truth that many voters cast their votes for whoever “won”, but many other voters chose somebody else.  It is truth that better headlines would be that “a plurality of voters” or “a majority of voters” supported the “winner”.

It is also truth that no matter who is doing the reporting, they have a limited amount of time or space.

It is also truth that this column should end before you fall asleep.

Also published in Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-02-04 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/02/04/6677_truth_or_truth.

Let’s Stop It with Global Warming Denial

The blogosphere is filled with nitpicking about NASA’s supposedly only 38 percent certainty about 2014 being the warmest year for recorded data.  Does it really matter if 2014 was the warmest year in recent history or the third warmest year? The trend is still up even though there may be slightly cooler years or there may be cooler spots that had been warmer.

Think of your house in winter.  Assume it is a five-room house with a basement. Assume you have no central heating and your only heat is from electric space heaters.

If you turn on one space heater in one room, you will feel warmer by the heater and colder as you move away from it.  Suppose you turn on a space heater in every room.  Each room will warm up near the space heater and be cooler away from the space heater.  If you are on the opposite side of the room, there is no room-heating!  And if you go to the basement, you have proven that there is no household warming!

What happens if you put a space heater in every corner of each room and in every corner of the basement?  You will have a very warm house, maybe an unbearably hot house.

So what happens if you have a few steam-powered factories?  Not much.  What happens if you add hundreds and thousands of steam-powered factories.  Well, the areas around these factories may be a bit warmer, but few will notice until they go into the factories.

What happens if you have a few steam-powered trains?  Not much, just like with the factories.

What happens if you have a few thousand gasoline-powered cars?  Not much.  But if you take lots of measurements, you will find that the temperatures are rising slightly around the areas where these factories, trains, and cars operate.

What happens when there are hundreds of thousands of factories and trains and millions of cars?  Where is all the heat from these going to go?  Magically back into the ground where the fuel came from?

Add to this that these factories, trains, and cars generate carbon dioxide.  Since the Earth takes in energy as ultra-violet radiation and sends out energy as infra-red radiation, you would think there would be some stability in energy.  But carbon dioxide (and other gasses) block infra-red radiation.  The more carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere, the more heat will be retained on earth.  The more generators of carbon dioxide we have, the more carbon dioxide we will have dumped into the atmosphere.

Let’s go back to our household heaters.  Nowadays, we use electric heaters.  Any carbon dioxide that results from our use is generated outside the house.  But what if our heaters are fireplaces and wood stoves?  The carbon dioxide is being generated inside our house.  If we are not careful, we could suffocate ourselves.  To make sure we have enough oxygen, we have to have leaky windows and doors or some controlled source of oxygen.

A simple thought experiment shows that we are definitely putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  For millennia, people cooked their food and warmed themselves with wood fires.  The wood provided the carbon for fuel and the trees absorbed the carbon dioxide to grow more wood.  This is a virtual cycle: what gets used for one purpose is recycled to produce more of the original substance.

Then people discovered coal in the ground.  This burned better than wood and was never rotten or damp.  For millennia, the techniques for extracting coal were too inefficient to provide world-wide use.

As the world population grew and agriculture spread, more trees were cleared for buildings and farms.  This meant less wood was available for fuel and alternatives were needed.  Extracting coal became more efficient.

However, its use wasn’t always efficient.  Many fireplaces and factories didn’t burn coal efficiently and much soot was dumped into the air.  This resulted in dirty laundry and more cases of pulmonary diseases.  As late as the 1940s, steam locomotives would spew cinders and other pollutants as they rumbled by.  At the time, we lived right next to the tracks in an otherwise nice neighborhood.  We would have to brush our hair after a train passed.

Coal and other fossil fuels are inefficient for another reason.  They ain’t making them anymore!  We have drained the swamps where critters large and small drowned and slowly broke down into coal and oil.  We have also “drained” the easy access to oil and coal.  Now we blow up mountains to get coal and pound the heck out of the underlying rock formations to get oil and gas.  The first has ruined towns and rivers.  The second is causing minor earthquakes.

Both of these operations remove thousands of trees and other vegetation that would absorb carbon dioxide.  Add to that we want larger and larger parking lots, wider and wider highways, and larger and larger buildings.  We will need more oil for these and will take away more of the carbon sink vegetation.  This is a vicious cycle; things only get worse.

Meanwhile we have more and more carbon being burned and many people making lots and lots of money producing carbon fuels.  To understand the denial of global warming, follow the money.  As Adam Smith wrote in his “Wealth of Nations”, those who live by profit are not to be trusted.

You can find more thoughts like this at my blog: http://magree.blogspot.com.

A thought for Labor Day

"The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment."

- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

For more selections from Wealth of Nations, see “The Invisible Adam Smith”.

Is business experience a qualification for government office?

Some Republican candidates are running for statewide office in Minnesota.  See
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270538031.html and http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270412441.html.  They claim that their business experience makes them better qualified for government service.

Adam Smith seems to have thought differently.  He said that those who live by profit are not to be trusted because they have often “deceived and oppressed” the public.

See “The Invisible Adam Smith” for more about this.

Quote of the Day: Low wages, low prosperity

"The human cost of low wages is obvious and has been extensively documented. But there are important economic and business costs to low wages that are far less clear and little understood. Many of America’s largest employers pay as little as possible, driving down the consuming power of their workers, and then wonder why their customers are unable to spend."

"Henry Ford's Genius Wage Hike", Daniel Gross, The Daily Beast, 2014-01-06.

Some of the comments add a bit more nuance, such as Henry Ford was not all that angelic in paying "all" of his assembly-line workers that much.  They had to meet certain personality standards with home checks that few people would tolerate today.

Henry Ford, at least partially, was following Adam Smith's advice:

"The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition, that they are going fast backwards."

His contemporaries and his successors seem to be bent at making things go "fast backwards".

For more ignored advice from Adam Smith, see "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Google does no evil?

After learning that Google had joined ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, I sent the following letter (paper) to Larry Page, CEO and a founder of Google.  I forgot to include that Google got its start with a federal grant.

By the way, I think that paper letters have far more influence than petitions, online or otherwise.  It's easy to add your name to a petition; it takes time and thought to write a letter.

I didn't take the time to fit into my letter a reminder that Google's start was made possible by a government grant.  See the very interesting "On the Origins of Google".

Larry Page
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043

Dear Mr. Page:

I was surprised and disappointed to learn that Google had joined ALEC, an organization that is opposed to much of what Google stands for:

From “Ten things we know to be true” on your company philosophy:

“You can make money without doing evil.”

ALEC is an anti-democratic organization if there was ever one.

Consider the words of Adam Smith:

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [those who live by profit], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776

For more tidbits from Adam Smith, see “The Invisible Adam Smith” at http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-invisible-adam-smith.html

I wonder if I want to keep using Google products.  But maybe I should use Google products to fight whatever “evil” Google may do.

Democratic capitalism is an oxymoron

Democratic means government by the people.  It is commonly understood that each person has one vote.

Capitalism is raising money for an enterprise with the contributions of a few people or thousands of people.  Each contributor of capital to the enterprise has as many votes as the number of shares he or she holds.  One can argue that this is fair; the person who put one million dollars into the company had a greater interest than the person who put one hundred dollars into the company.

In practice, capitalism becomes distorted to the rule of a few.  Capitalism leads to a plutocracy both in the enterprise and in the various governments.

In the enterprise, members of the board periodically award themselves and the top executives shares in the enterprise, thus increasing the number of votes they have, at no or low cost.

In government, the executives and other large shareholders put a lot of money into lobbying government for laws in their favor and into campaigns of political candidates who they believe will be sympathetic to their interests.  Regular readers of this blog know what Adam Smith thought of that influence.  See "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Capitalism, when there are many companies with similar focus, is a very good idea.  It means that there are many people working on bringing new or lower cost products to the market.  This doesn't mean that government can't produce good ideas; it just does not have enough resources to produce as many good ideas as are needed.  And often government is needed to encourage good ideas in certain fields or to curtail bad ideas that are harmful to the public.  In fact, corporations fall all over themselves to get government contracts to build roads or build more lethal weapons.

You might be able to come up with a better blended phrase that reflects the need for both democracy and capitalism.  My best shot today is balance of democracy and capitalism.  Now the next question is: when will this balance be achieved?

I did something truly unique but "ignored"

As I inserted "ALEC" as a label for "Poster: A warning from the 'Invisible Hand'" Google's Blogger offered the suggestion "ALEC's Bag-Time Band".  Oh! That's clever.  Oh! I had used it in another blog entry.  I did a search for it and received two hits and only two hits!  It was for "Republicans are not republicans" that I wrote in May 2012.

The good news is that my phrase was a first and unique.  The bad news is that nobody passed it on.  No wonder the reverse spammers from Russia and elsewhere make so many hits on my blog:(

Poster: A warning from the "Invisible Hand"

Here is a poster for you to send to any writer or politician who has taken a position for or against corporate influence in public affairs.  Drag the poster to your favorite document or mail program and print or send as many copies as you would like.  All I ask is that you include the link at the bottom.

A super-efficient corporation

The St. Louis Dispatch published an editorial "ALEC's backers run and hide from Durbin inquiry" on August 14.  It was republished in the Star Tribune on August 18.

I sent a thank-you email to Tony Messenger, the editorial page editor of the St. Louis Dispatch, with my usual quote, and he sent a thank-you email one minute later!

It is also good to see that not all members of a group march in lockstep with what some members of that group demand.

Jefferson, Smith, and Large Corporations

Although Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was written as a complaint against the King of England it really was a complaint about royal and parliamentary support of abusive crown-chartered private corporations.

Similarly, in the same year Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations warned of the corporate control of government and corporate abusiveness towards the British public.

Now we have Paul Krugman warning of the control of government by Delaware-chartered corporations and their abusiveness towards the American public.

And many of these corporations wrap themselves in the flag and Adam Smith!!!

To paraphrase "Where have all the flowers gone?" when will we ever learn?

Deceiving the public – new data

"[Those who live by profit] have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed [the public]", Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776.

"The Worst Lies Tech Companies Tell You", Adrian Covert, CNNMoney, 2013-08-07 lists some of these deceptions including internet speeds, battery life, and storage space.  The comments are all over the map pro, con, right on, and snide (both towards the author and towards corporations).

See also "The Invisible Adam Smith".

"Free marketers" deceive and oppress again

Large banks are buying commodity warehouses and then moving goods from one warehouse to another to increase their profits.  Apparently some international agreement allows them to do this.  Although this movement only adds a fraction of a cent to a beverage in an aluminum can, the huge number of cans used puts this cost to consumers in the hundreds of billions.  What's this about "you'll get ahead by hard work"?  I guess it is hard work to think of schemes to "deceive and oppress the public"*.

See "A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold", David Kocieniewski, New York Times,2013-07-20, also reprinted in Star Tribune, "Banks schemes adding hidden costs to consumers", 2013-07-20

* See "The Invisible Adam Smith"

Paper covers net, a readership comparison

Many of my acquaintances in Duluth ask me if I still write for the Reader Weekly.  Other than an occasional letter to editor, I haven't written any column since 2008.

After an article about some of the proposed mining in the region and the promises of no damage to the environment, I submitted my blog entry "The Invisible Adam Smith".  After all, the Reader often reprints material from the Christian Science Monitor and from Jim Hightower's web site.

With my using a wrong email address and the delay of having an open spot, the Reader Weekly published "The Invisible Adam Smith" in the 2013-04-25 issue.

Considering that hundreds of people in the region read most articles in the Reader Weekly, I assume more people have read my article in the Reader than have read my article on the web.  The latter count is 57!!  Since October when I posted it!

So, if you're an obscure blogger like me, you might have more readers if you write for some local print media than if you write a regular blog entry.  That is, paper can still be a more powerful medium than the internet.

"Makers" are takers and "takers" are makers

The "masters", in Adam Smith's parlance, claim they are the makers, the one's who get things done.  Or are they the "takers" who depend upon other people's work but take credit for it?

Adam Smith did write, "It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operation of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects."

In other words, if someone doesn't invest the capital, lots of things won't be done.  Would you be reading this on your computer if there hadn't been the capital to start a company that made a lot of computers?

Smith also wrote, "The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences [sic] of life…" and "The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition, that they are going fast backwards."

If there are no laborers, then there is no one to carry out the "plans and projects of the employers of stock".  Michael Dell may have been able to assemble computers in his dorm room, but he needed others to make the parts.  As his business grew, he needed others to assemble and ship the computers.

But how many CEOs started the companies that they head?  Very few. Most either came up through the ranks of management or were hired from outside.  They weren't the ones who put "into motion the greater part of the useful labour".  Thus, they are not the ones who make, but are the ones who take the work of others.  In fact, they often consider the actual makers as taking from the company and as such are disposable.

How many restaurant chain CEOs are cooking the hamburgers?  Where would the CEOs be if there were no hamburger cooks, no cashiers, and no clean-up crew?  If their companies have a good year, how much of their bonus are they willing to pass on to the people who made those profits possible?

We have at least one good example of the effects of treating well-paid employees as expenses rather than assets.  I saw Circuit City's demise coming when they fired all the high-paid experienced clerks.  These clerks made the sales; the executives took the profits of those sales.  See "Labor is not a commodity".

Immigration and High-Tech Innovation

Webform to Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Immigration Bill to Boost High-Tech Innovation

In the larger picture, I'm all for people moving wherever they want in the world, but when it comes to immigration to increase "high-tech innovation" there are several caveats to consider:

Companies have narrowed their "skill sets" to be check lists rather than overall considerations, thus limiting the number of Americans available for the jobs offered.

Companies seek to pay the lowest wages possible; increasing the number of immigrants allows them to select from a larger pool of workers who will be satisfied with smaller wages.  See "Norm Matloff's H-1B page: cheap labor, age discrimination, offshoring", updated in 2011 or later.  Rep. Zoe Lofgren found that the H-1B wages were $40,000 less than the average wage for computer systems analysts in her district.

Companies are unwilling to pay the taxes to provide the education needed to create a large pool of knowledge workers.  They would rather that other countries pay to educate a significant number of their workers.



[I didn't include this in my webform to Sen. Klobuchar, but see also "Is There a Tech Staff Shortage?"  I wrote it for the Northland Reader in October 1999.]

Adam Smith warned of special interests like this in "Wealth of Nations":

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [capitalists], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

What do Steve Jobs, Adam Smith, and Xenophon have in common?

They all understood that the whole requires many parts.

I thought of this while contemplating all the commentators who seemingly give full credit to Steve Jobs for all of Apple's innovative products, from the original Apple computer to the iPad.  Sorry, but he needed the help of thousands of people to bring these products to market.

Let's start over two thousand years ago in Persia.

Many Greek mercenaries were in the service of Cyrus, brother of the Persian Emperor.  Cyrus used the Greeks in a battle to overthrow his brother, but Cyrus was killed in battle.  The Emperors forces invited the Greek generals to peace conference and slaughtered them all.  The Persians thought this would demoralize the Greek mercenaries.

As usual, tyrants never understand democrats.  The Greeks, having a democratic tradition, elected new generals and fought their way against much opposition back to Greece.

For more about Xenophon, see Wikipedia - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon

Adam Smith opens "The Wealth of Nations" with

"The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations."

In other words, the masters, the capitalists, the CEOs, or whatever name you give to those at the top of an economic hierarchy would not be able to do anything without a few dozen or thousands of people doing all the "labour" needed to bring an idea to market.

Many reporters are giving full credit to Steve Jobs for the iPhone and the iPad.  Really?  Could Steve Jobs conceived of every detail of these products all by himself?  Could Steve Jobs have designed all the circuits or all the programs that make these products so useful.

Sure, he may have had a vision for these products.  But don't you think that he had lots of discussions with others on how to design, manufacture, and market these products?

Let's go back to 1983 and before when the first Macintosh was being designed.  I think about two dozen people were involved, some of them responsible for a single software project, like MacWrite and MacPaint.  But these designers weren't cloistered in their cubicles, noses to the coding sheet until they finished.  They collaborated with each other and Steve Jobs.

In short, success does not come about by the "hard work" of somebody at the top.  It comes about by the hard work of people at all levels.  If a worker doesn't set a switch properly at a certain time, the whole enterprise could come tumbling down.  If a manager doesn't ensure the proper training,  if a director doesn't ensure proper design, if a treasurer doesn't provide adequate funding for that design...

"For want of a nail..."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail_(proverb)#section_2

Humpty Dumpty and Free Markets

The Coffee Party on Facebook had a link to a CNN interview of Christine O'Donnell by Soledad O'Brien.  O'Donnell claims the Obama has made Marxist remarks.  O'Brien did call her on using the term Marxist but didn't really follow through.  Many respondents to the Coffee Party page were disappointed that O'Brien didn't press for specifics.

One commenter mentioned that the Wealth of Nations wasn't published when the Declaration of Indendence was written, and so the signers couldn't include Adam Smith's thoughts.

I added the following to the comments:

Words! Words!  As Humpty Dumpty said in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass": 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

Worse than the misuse of the words "Marxism" and "Socialism" is the misuse of the word "Free Market".

The classical definition of a free market is:

1. Many buyers and sellers
2. Buyers and sellers are free to enter and leave the market at any time.
3. Buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a satisfactory transaction.
4. All the costs are covered in the transaction, that is, no externalities.

Interestingly, it is "free marketers" who don't want true free markets.

We have more and more consolidations into larger and larger corporations.

Are you free to leave the health care market when your child is sick?

GMO producers and others don't want buyers to know what's in their products.

Who is covering the costs of pollution and nuclear waste?

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was first published in 1776.  Maybe the signers of the Declaration of Independence hadn't received copies yet, but I'm sure that many of the signers of the Constitution had read it by 1787.

Those who love to quote the "invisible hand" should read the other 500+ pages, including "When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes
otherwise when in favour of the masters."