Adam Smith was trying to answer the question, "Why is everyone suddenly becoming richer?" and the result of that was the beginning of the field of economics. He

Adam Smith was trying to answer the question, "Why is everyone suddenly becoming richer?" and the result of that was the beginning of the field of economics. He made many observations, models, and predictions, but I don't recall smaller firm sizes being one of them. That prediction would certainly go against the evidence around him at the time. He published The Wealth of Nations when the British East India Company was at its peak and commanded an army of a quarter million people. > The bargaining power of the individual is negligible in such a circumstance, and alternative work is hard to come by, or is impoverishing. While third world countries are in truly terrible plights due to this kind of situation, large portions of the United States are subject to the same forces. Your point about terrible plights simply isn't true. Wages in the developing world have increased greatly. Since I've been born, over a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Those living on <$1/day are now less than 10% of the world population.[1] And in the US, non-managerial wages have stayed the same or increased since 1960.[2] (These statements are accounting for inflation, of course.) US suicide rates have increased, yes, but they're still lower than they were in the 1950s and they're below countries such as Switzerland. Last I checked, Switzerland wasn't exactly a land of despair. Something is causing more people to commit suicide, but it's probably not the economy. 1. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-methods https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-history-methods 2. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...