14 ms·

Adam Smith is consistent in his opposition to rent seeking as a behavior, as embodied in his disdain for landlords and other “unproductive classes” throughout

Adam Smith is consistent in his opposition to rent seeking as a behavior, as embodied in his disdain for landlords and other “unproductive classes” throughout the Wealth of Nations. He was a moral philosopher above all concerned with how systems and incentives guide human behavior toward positive or destructive ends. You haven’t provided any evidence to the contrary, only tried to invent some special, imaginary form of his philosophy with carve outs that suit your beliefs.

roenxi 2y ago
Yeah, but the words mean something a little different to Smith - he's writing in the context of 1700s Scotland. As you note, he is talking about unproductive classes. That is different from the modern tenant-landlord relation where there is an unproductive aspect and a productive aspect. He wouldn't have changed his position at all on the unproductive part, but if we got rid of that he'd have been OK with what was left. > You haven’t provided any evidence to the contrary Neither have you. You've provided huge amounts of evidence that Smith doesn't like rents from land. I'm with Smith on that, rents from land are a moral and economic problem. The issue your argument has is modern rental landlords aren't just doing that - they are also maintaining and renting out a significant amount of capital. That aspect of their role isn't going away; it would be silly to demand that everyone owns the house that they live in. The word has drifted. We aren't talking about aristocrats who own vast tracks of farmland that they're leaching off. At the start of the chapter he lays it out with "In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave [the tenant] no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.". That isn't what modern landlords are doing.
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and raises rent based on its increased value from the productive economic activity that occurs in and around it, as opposed to anything they do themselves. This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” i.e, extracts for himself the value created by others through productive economic activity occurring on or around his asset. This isn’t about any semantic drift, but your disagreement with Smith because you like landlords, are a landlord, like rent seeking in general or whatever else. Just say that instead of wasting people’s time with some imagined form of his philosophy that does not exist.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and ... Wealth of Nations is available for free online and Chapter 11 isn't that long [0]. You should probably find a copy and read it - he is talking about a different type of rent. He explains himself in excruciating detail and outlines how "rent" is controlling access to natural factors of production like kelp, timber, cropland (especially cropland, this is a major focus of his [1]), coal, hunting opportunities, yadda yadda. If you want to grep for "After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind." you can see he breaks down lodging into the natural elements used to create a house and how they all present opportunities for the person who controls the natural resource to extract rent. He isn't talking about renting out capital which is a significant part of what modern landlords do for tenants. Houses (and apartments) aren't naturally occurring. > This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” Smith, you and I all agree on that. But we agree in the context Smith was using the word where that was all the landlord was doing. In the modern context, you can take all the parasitic aspects out of the landlord and there'll still be something left behind that you pay money to every month. The house doesn't appear by almost-magic like coal does - someone has to build it and the owner doesn't have to be the same as the beneficial user. [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_11 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/... - let's use a better link than the Marxists [1] We get this choice quote: "Food is, in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterward affords rent derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labor in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land."
    - bugglebeetle 2y ago
      I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking, where labor and capital are deployed to productive ends and not siphoned off to unproductive ones by rentiering. Go watch this talk by UCL economist and historian Mariana Mazzucato for better context. https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato-capitalism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=short https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzuca...

roenxi 2y ago

Yeah, but the words mean something a little different to Smith - he's writing in the context of 1700s Scotland. As you note, he is talking about unproductive classes. That is different from the modern tenant-landlord relation where there is an unproductive aspect and a productive aspect. He wouldn't have changed his position at all on the unproductive part, but if we got rid of that he'd have been OK with what was left. > You haven’t provided any evidence to the contrary Neither have you. You've provided huge amounts of evidence that Smith doesn't like rents from land. I'm with Smith on that, rents from land are a moral and economic problem. The issue your argument has is modern rental landlords aren't just doing that - they are also maintaining and renting out a significant amount of capital. That aspect of their role isn't going away; it would be silly to demand that everyone owns the house that they live in. The word has drifted. We aren't talking about aristocrats who own vast tracks of farmland that they're leaching off. At the start of the chapter he lays it out with "In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave [the tenant] no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.". That isn't what modern landlords are doing.

bugglebeetle 2y ago
A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and raises rent based on its increased value from the productive economic activity that occurs in and around it, as opposed to anything they do themselves. This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” i.e, extracts for himself the value created by others through productive economic activity occurring on or around his asset. This isn’t about any semantic drift, but your disagreement with Smith because you like landlords, are a landlord, like rent seeking in general or whatever else. Just say that instead of wasting people’s time with some imagined form of his philosophy that does not exist.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > A landlord in Smith’s day is more or less the same as someone who buys a building and ... Wealth of Nations is available for free online and Chapter 11 isn't that long [0]. You should probably find a copy and read it - he is talking about a different type of rent. He explains himself in excruciating detail and outlines how "rent" is controlling access to natural factors of production like kelp, timber, cropland (especially cropland, this is a major focus of his [1]), coal, hunting opportunities, yadda yadda. If you want to grep for "After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind." you can see he breaks down lodging into the natural elements used to create a house and how they all present opportunities for the person who controls the natural resource to extract rent. He isn't talking about renting out capital which is a significant part of what modern landlords do for tenants. Houses (and apartments) aren't naturally occurring. > This is the thrust of his argument, the landlord is an immoral parasite because he “reaps what he does not sow,” Smith, you and I all agree on that. But we agree in the context Smith was using the word where that was all the landlord was doing. In the modern context, you can take all the parasitic aspects out of the landlord and there'll still be something left behind that you pay money to every month. The house doesn't appear by almost-magic like coal does - someone has to build it and the owner doesn't have to be the same as the beneficial user. [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_11 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/... - let's use a better link than the Marxists [1] We get this choice quote: "Food is, in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterward affords rent derives that part of its value from the improvement of the powers of labor in producing food by means of the improvement and cultivation of land."
  - bugglebeetle 2y ago
    I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking, where labor and capital are deployed to productive ends and not siphoned off to unproductive ones by rentiering. Go watch this talk by UCL economist and historian Mariana Mazzucato for better context. https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato-capitalism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=short https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzuca...