Adam Smith and the Virtues of a Modern Economy

Abstract

Outlines Smith’s argument that how, and why, the moral standards by which ‘economics’ was judged needed to be recalibrated for the modern world of commerce. By labelling this a ‘recalibration’, the implication is that when Smith displaces the dominant view of economic morality he replaces it with another; he does not, contrary to some interpretations by both friend and foe, situate economics in an ethics- free zone.