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I could make an argument against that: The factory workers are leaving underutilized what is by far the most useful tool in the entire process, the human brain

I could make an argument against that: The factory workers are leaving underutilized what is by far the most useful tool in the entire process, the human brain. A cottage worker has sight over the whole process and is directly empowered to make adjustments to it that increase efficiency or improve the product. The factory worker is helpless to do anything but repeat a repetitive act as according to orders, leaving their mind to rot.

zhte415 7y ago
Often only the first parts of the book are quoted, most often the famous pin factory. But this misses the book as a body of work. An except from later in the book that I think aligns with your point: > the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. It's worth noting that Smith's work was a prelude to that of, for example, Ricardo on the pricing of land (labour/capital) and Marx on ownersip of land/capital.

zhte415 7y ago

Often only the first parts of the book are quoted, most often the famous pin factory. But this misses the book as a body of work. An except from later in the book that I think aligns with your point: > the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. It's worth noting that Smith's work was a prelude to that of, for example, Ricardo on the pricing of land (labour/capital) and Marx on ownersip of land/capital.