I have a list of a compilation of deviations from laissez-faire of Smith. It's pretty long, I'll tell you that.
Of course, there's the Navigation Act, the National Defense, which would include practically everything.
The Marshall Spirit Decay, the federal government-run education.
In order to inculcate obedience to the state among the populace, scarcely a laissez-faire doctrine.
According to Smith, an instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent and orderly
They feel themselves more respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their
lawful superiors, says Smith, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors.
They are less apt to be misled in any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures
of government.
That's why they're favored government-run education.
That was a status.
Let's face it.
A nonsense man being, let's say, a fair person.
He's in favor of regulating bank paper, allowing fractional reserve banking, which most of
Most of his predecessors were against, by the way, including Hume. Hume was a hardcore 100% gold person. He thought all banking fractions were banking as fraud.
Most of his friends and predecessors did. It was only Smith who started bringing in bank credit.
His favorite public works included highways, bridges, and harbors.
On the rationale that private enterprise would not have the incentive, unquote, to maintain them properly, a rather odd position to take.
And a particularly lengthy list of taxes which he advocated, each of which interfered in the free market.
For example, the sort of pre-Georgist, as Ricardo was definitely a pre-Georgist.
See, all these guys, including Smith, believe that the landlord had no function.
And the farmers had a function, the landlord, just ownership of land was functionless, and therefore can be taxed.
Tax on rent, the whole smearing of rent, the whole vicious smear of rent, which really starts with Smith.
And of course, Ricardo maximizes it.
But they didn't understand, for example, the landlords performed a very important function, namely allocating scarce land.
They also favor taxes on import of foreign manufacturers, moderate taxes, taxes on the export of the rural world, and heavy taxes on luxurious consumption, taxes on luxury carriages, specifically to co-tax the invulnerability and vanity of the rich, once again, the Calvinist thrust.
He's also got a puritanical hostility of liquor, which even though he was not a post-millennialist,
the anti-liquor thing was already there, he called for heavy tax on distilleries in order
to crack down on hard liquor, and induced people to drink instead the co-wholesome and invigorating
liquor of beer and ale, somehow that was okay, which hard liquor was evil, sin.
But even on ale he said there were high retail tax and retail sales of oral liquor to discourage
ale houses.
Of course, he's also saying, well, accept the rich policy, the rest of income taxation, let it never be forgotten, with Smith.
He says, the whole, I mean, who would wear a Smith tie after this?