Message from discussion To David Friedman: Antitrust

From: gsoll...@virginia.edu
Subject: Re: To David Friedman: Antitrust
Date: 1998/05/08
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In article <199805080606.XAA29...@cybere.creative.net>,
  "Vincent Cook" <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]> wrote:
>
> I'm talking about the minting of coins, not the issuance of
> paper currency.  The world used gold and silver
> coins as the standard money back in those days.
>
The "world" is a big place; what we care about here is Scotland, where the
banks in fact had a well developed system of bank-notes.  Smith held that it
was proper to restrict the notes to "large" amounts, (I think) because those
making large transactions would be better able to judge the reliability of
the bank behind the notes.  The "poor" would use coin.  Perhaps for this bit
of paternalism Smith stands condemned.

Is there any evidence that the French economists you cite objected to the
government minting of coins?

> I do have a quote from the _Wealth of Nations_ regarding his
> support of public education:
>
> "An instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent
> and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.  They feel themselves,
> each individuallly, more respectable, and more likely to obtain the
> respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more
> disposed to respect those superiors.  They are . . . less apt to be
> misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of
> government."
>

And I, too, have a quote from Smith:

"Domestic education is the institution of nature;
public education, the contrivance of man.  It is
surely unnecessary to say, which is likely to be the wisest."

Your Smith quote says nothing about *public* education.  I'm curious; did
your quote come from the Rothbard book you mentioned?

> Turgot's hard-core libertarian attitudes can be discerned from this
> passage from _Plan for a Paper on Taxation in General_:
>
> "It seems that Public Finance, like a greedy monster, has been lying
> in wait for the entire wealth of the people."
>

Was Turgot speaking of government in general, or of his experience with
French government in particular?  That is, if Turgot had been in Scotland and
Smith in France, what differences might we have seen in their writings?

Gordon Sollars
gsoll...@virginia.edu

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