HKB
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Often appears with: contracts, oaths, and obligation · value, price, and exchange · scarcity pricing · political legitimacy and consent · political artifices · inland corn dealer · famine, scarcity, and plenty · famine prevention · education and the training of the young · education · contract enforcement by interest
Usually: argument (2) · detachment (2) · injustice endured (1) · exhortation (1)
“It is the interest of the inland corn dealer is the same. By supplying them, as nearly as he can judge, in this proportion, he is likely to sell all his corn for the highest price, and with the greatest profit;” Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth · insight
Smith argues that inland corn dealers’ interests align with the public in scarcity: prices should rise only to the real scarcity to prevent famine or loss, since overpricing causes unsold surplus.
consumption; thirdly, that of the merchant-exporter of home produce for foreign consumption; and, fourthly, that of the merchant-carrier, or of the importer of corn, in order to export it again. I. The interest of the inland dealer, and that of the great body of the people, how opposite soever they may at first appear, are, even in years of the greatest scarcity, exactly the same. It is his interest to raise the pri…
He argues that even though early perceptions of promise-obligations come from limited experience of society, later a moral sentiment joins interest, while promises still impose no natural obligation.
whoever uses them is immediately bound by his interest to execute his engagements, and must never expect to be trusted any more, if he refuse to perform what he promised. Nor is that knowledge, which is requisite to make mankind sensible of this interest in the institution and observance of promises, to be esteemed superior to the capacity of human nature, however savage and uncultivated. There needs but a very litt…