 This is Classics of Liberty from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Caleb Brown. Today we have two selections by Adam Smith, the man of system and labor and commerce. Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments included this passage, The Man of System, on two distinct ways of seeing the world, spontaneous order versus planned economy. The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals and still more those of the great orders and societies into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force. But we'll religiously observe what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people and will remedy them as well as he can, the inconveniences which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong. But like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavor to establish the best that the people can bear. The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them. But that, in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from what the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder. In this next selection, this time from The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith discusses prices in terms of labor and happiness. As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labor, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power or in other words by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labor which is over and above his own consumption for such parts of the produce of other men's labor as he has occasion for. Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labor has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labor can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labor of other people and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labor which he can command or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity therefore to the person who possesses it and who means not to use or consume it himself but to exchange it for other commodities is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor therefore is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings by any law which either could be executed or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. Those were two selections by Adam Smith, the man of system from the theory of moral sentiments and labor and commerce from the wealth of nations. Find more classics of liberty at libertarianism.org.