> The invisible hand doesn't symbolise the problem of state intervention, but of state capture (i.e. merchant elites lobbying governments to protect their monopolies). On the other hand, merchant elites are a "necessary evil" and the art of good governance is balancing over- and under-regulating them.
The second sentence is 100% true and completely in line with Adam Smith's thinking and the overall Scottish Enlightenment.
The first sentence is an accurate summary of the article, but the article is slightly but profoundly wrong. Smith and his ilk probably would think that the (modern) idea of "state intervention" vs "state non-intervention" to be silly. By the time of Ricardo, JS Mill and Marx, "moral philosophers" like Smith were referred to as "political economists" because they understood that the state was the base layer on which the rest of society was built. After all, even if someone is a complete "market fundamentalist" today, he or she still depends on the state enforcing property rights, enforcing general criminal laws against theft, murder, rape, etc., and enforcing private causes of action like torts against neighbors who cause a nuisance, pollute, etc. Were Adam Smith alive today, he would be in favor of all of those "state interventions" in the market, as he seems to have been in his own time. (As a parallel, the concept of "civil society" has followed a similar arc: Originally, Aristotle meant a community bound under a common set of norms and the rule of law. Over time, the concept came to mean groups that exist "outside" or exclusive of the state.)
At the same time, he would have likely been against some of the more heavy-handed regulatory approaches that modern states use from agricultural planning to zoning rules, and he would be against them for the same reason that he disliked the Mercantile System in the 18th century: they give huge advantages to incumbents, they often fail to solve the problems they are organized to solve, and they depend on effectively arbitrary rule by the state.
In my opinion, modern thinking has overzealously accepted black-and-white dichotomies like "for or against state intervention" or defining huge enumerations of incontrovertible "rights." In reality, the intelligent question would be (and the one Smith, Hume, et al. seemed interested in), as your second sentence suggests, "How much should the state intervene so that outcomes are better than the alternative?"
From the man himself:
> All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.
The second sentence is 100% true and completely in line with Adam Smith's thinking and the overall Scottish Enlightenment.
The first sentence is an accurate summary of the article, but the article is slightly but profoundly wrong. Smith and his ilk probably would think that the (modern) idea of "state intervention" vs "state non-intervention" to be silly. By the time of Ricardo, JS Mill and Marx, "moral philosophers" like Smith were referred to as "political economists" because they understood that the state was the base layer on which the rest of society was built. After all, even if someone is a complete "market fundamentalist" today, he or she still depends on the state enforcing property rights, enforcing general criminal laws against theft, murder, rape, etc., and enforcing private causes of action like torts against neighbors who cause a nuisance, pollute, etc. Were Adam Smith alive today, he would be in favor of all of those "state interventions" in the market, as he seems to have been in his own time. (As a parallel, the concept of "civil society" has followed a similar arc: Originally, Aristotle meant a community bound under a common set of norms and the rule of law. Over time, the concept came to mean groups that exist "outside" or exclusive of the state.)
At the same time, he would have likely been against some of the more heavy-handed regulatory approaches that modern states use from agricultural planning to zoning rules, and he would be against them for the same reason that he disliked the Mercantile System in the 18th century: they give huge advantages to incumbents, they often fail to solve the problems they are organized to solve, and they depend on effectively arbitrary rule by the state.
In my opinion, modern thinking has overzealously accepted black-and-white dichotomies like "for or against state intervention" or defining huge enumerations of incontrovertible "rights." In reality, the intelligent question would be (and the one Smith, Hume, et al. seemed interested in), as your second sentence suggests, "How much should the state intervene so that outcomes are better than the alternative?"
From the man himself:
> All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.