Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

For Adam Smith, the way people work and act determines what kind of society they live in and what their opportunities for happiness will be. That's why he's so obsessed with promoting competition—he thinks that the only way people will be motivated to take action and be the best they can be is if they are forced by their competitors to be better.

If everyone is just given a certain salary regardless of how hard they work or how smart they are, then no one will ever be motivated to perform better and society will get sluggish and lazy. Or at least that's how it all works in Smith's mind.

Family Life

For Smith, workers' wages have to stay above the cost of having children and raising a family. If they ever fell below this amount, there would be no workers left after fifty years because there'd be no new generation to replace them.

Having a family is an economic decision, according to Smith. If you live in a country where wages are good, you'll want more kids because they'll bring in money as soon as they can work. If the wages in your country are awful, you'll have fewer (or no) kids because you won't be able to afford to raise them.

Food

There is nothing more productive in Adam Smith's eyes than farmers, and that's because they take a simple patch of dirt and use it to produce the food to feed an entire country. That's why Smith is so frustrated with government policies that have made it difficult for farmers to improve their land and to get bigger and bigger crop yields with new farming technologies.

If farming were open to general competition, Smith is convinced, people would come up with better innovations and produce even more food. But instead, the government puts policies in place that benefit a small group of people. So much for good ideas!

Location

Adam Smith is a big fan of letting business people move their property to wherever it can make the most profit. But he finds it totally hypocritical when governments are willing to allow this but not willing to let workers move wherever they want.

In his mind, you can't let property move from place to place (like a factory moving to a different country) unless you're willing to let workers move around too. If you allow one and not the other, then you're totally rigging the game in favor of the people who own the factories. They can just move their factories to wherever the workers are most desperate.

Occupation

It's perfectly natural in Adam Smith's mind for some people to make more money and have better lives than others. It all depends on how much skill and intelligence they have, how hard they work, and how important their job is to society. There are other factors, too, but the bottom line is that Smith totally believes in an unequal society. In the end, he thinks that the free market should sort out everything the way it should be.