Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 262-263 of Samuel Gregg’s excellent new book, The Civilization of Commerce:

For, “to give” requires some degree of other-regarding, minimally expressed through an awareness of and even sympathy for someone else’s needs and wants. That necessitates a willingness to put yourself in another person’s place, even if briefly and temporarily. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith devotes many pages to describing how this occurs. “To take,” by contrast, demands no substantive reflection on another person’s ambitions or needs, let alone the conditions under which other people find themselves.

DBx: Yes.

The taxman, like the thief, need know nothing about the persons whose property is taken other than the fact that those persons possess property that can, with force, be taken. The merchant, in contrast, can profit only by knowing what his or her customers want.