There is a “man of system” in our midst—at work in our state, in our city, in our institutions of higher education. In the “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith warned us to beware such men.
“The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it,” Smith writes. “He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.
Sound like anyone you know?
As Smith tried to teach us, it is not necessarily the ends of the man of system that constitute a threat. It is the means of the man of system that are dangerous. The man of system seeks to use power and purchased influence to impose his will. In the process, he disregards the moral autonomy of others.
He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own …
As a way of proceeding, such an approach falls far short of the ideals of a liberal democracy. Furthermore, such an approach, Smith warns us, may well backfire: “If those two principles … are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”
The man of system faces a knowledge problem. He does not know the social context in which each of us operates and makes decisions. Even when he seeks to promote liberty, if he does not recognize the knowledge problem he faces and proceed with the appropriate humility. The disruption and harm his plan produces can generate such a backlash as to upend the entire endeavor.
There is a man of system within all of us. Fortunately, most of us possess neither the political capacity nor the money to purchase our ideal plan. Instead, in pursuit of our interests, we must use the power of persuasion. We must respect the moral autonomy of our neighbors and convince them to employ their agency towards the causes we favor.
As we consider the best structure for our state and local government, as we appraise the wisdom of the privatization of publicly owned and operated entities, as we examine the extent of external influence we should allow in our institutions of higher education, we would be well advised to beware the man of system in our midst.
Our elected officials, especially, should commit to the power of persuasion as the means through which they operate and respect the moral autonomy of those they represent. The passionate views of an individual should not be accorded greater merit simply because that individual happens to be financially wealthy. Let none of us sell ourselves and our neighbors to any man of system.
(While we follow Smith in using “man of system,” our concerns obviously apply to any person, regardless of gender, who exhibits the behavior identified by Smith.)
David Rapach is professor of Economics and the John Simon Endowed Chair in Economics at Saint Louis University. Bonnie Wilson is associate professor of Economics at Saint Louis University.
