Quotation of the Day…

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… is from GMU Econ alum Nathanael Snow’s July 2026 EconLog post titled “America the Market” [references removed; bracketed remark original to Snow]:

Impartial institutions facilitate exchange. The broader open market and society are held together through exchange that coordinates our activities. [Adam] Smith points to market interactions as the prime example of how impersonal relations are often self-governed: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner.” We have to imagine what the other person wants and seek their sympathy. Instead of affection, we learn sympathy with others, starting as young people. “When [a child] is old enough to go to school, or to mix with its equals, it soon finds that they have no such indulgent partiality.” We internalize the morality of actions that earn us the approbation of our peers and develop a way of imaginatively judging our own actions that Smith considers similar to an impartial spectator. Good governance limits itself to maintaining justice among people impersonally relating to one another.