‘Self-betterment’, the ‘propensity to truck, barter, and exchange’ & to ‘avoid toil and trouble’

To Predict It Is Necessary to Know Your History
from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Capitalism was not designed, though futile attempts at socialism were ‘designed’, but unfortunately did not work out for those who had to endure the experiments. Societies can legislate for this or that form of parts of their economies; sometimes they work, and last for a while, voluntarily; most often they don’t.

Social evolution is not about design, it’s about experimenting, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. It has ever been thus. That is why history if littered with social experiments – the pyramids, the ‘hanging gardens' of Babylon, the Great Wall of China, the Scottish clans, the French majesties, ancient Greece and Rome, the hordes of Genghis Khan, Mahomet’s promises, the Czar’s empire, and the anonymous stone-tool makers of pre-history.

Globalism does not make co-ordinated design any easier, or local initiatives more difficult. At root, when all else is failing, the Smithian urges to ‘self-betterment’, the ‘propensity to truck, barter, and exchange’ to ‘avoid toil and trouble’, will assert themselves, no matter what else is happening, somewhere among some people, humanity will start over.