Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: creating a just and sustainable economy
- Part I Creating a new economic framework
- 2 Adam Smith's silence and an economics of property
- 3 Reclaiming the notions of provision and family
- 4 Making provisions in a dangerous world
- Part II The civic option
- Part III A civic view of labor, land, and money
- Part IV Civilizing economic systems
- Part V A civic agenda
- Appendix: Free enterprise and the economics of slavery
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Adam Smith's silence and an economics of property
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: creating a just and sustainable economy
- Part I Creating a new economic framework
- 2 Adam Smith's silence and an economics of property
- 3 Reclaiming the notions of provision and family
- 4 Making provisions in a dangerous world
- Part II The civic option
- Part III A civic view of labor, land, and money
- Part IV Civilizing economic systems
- Part V A civic agenda
- Appendix: Free enterprise and the economics of slavery
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Now that we have some idea of the differences between the economics of property and an economics of provision, we can begin the journey of moving from one framework to the other. That is not as easy as it seems. But if we agree that we have a moral obligation to direct our economy toward justice and sustainability, then we must take on the task. The current economic framework will simply not allow us to go where we need to go. The next chapters recount the full reality of the economics of property, which grew out of the Scottish Enlightenment, and then propose a model of how human communities should provide for one another. We begin with the economics of Adam Smith's Scotland.
THE CREATION OF WEALTH IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCOTLAND
Most visitors would have considered Scotland a rather undeveloped country at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Its union with England in 1707, however, proved to be a boon. Scottish merchants profited from the English Navigation Acts that required all goods from the British colonies to be exported on British ships and sent to British ports. They also profited from the Spanish and English wars, because the port of Glasgow was far enough north to serve as a safe place for shipments from the colonies. By the 1750s, the Scottish merchants of Glasgow dominated the tobacco trade, importing even more tobacco than London or other English cities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Civilizing the EconomyA New Economics of Provision, pp. 17 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010