The Ideas Of Adam Smith And Thomas Malthus

The ideas of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus opposed each other. Adam Smith was more optimistic in his approach, saying that all people can benefit from laissez-faire. On the contrary, Thomas Malthus believed that there will always be a poor class. Adam Smith was famous for his idea of the invisible hand, which leads a person to support their country with their labour without them even knowing it. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society. . .” (Smith 138). When a person works for a factory, that individual unknowingly supports his domestic industry and help his country in trade. Adam Smith thought this because of his optimistic nature towards human labor. He believed
Thomas Malthus on the other hand, chose to ignore the poor in his philosophy. He thought that the poor can cause the population to increase. To limit their reproduction, the government aid to the poor must be eliminated. Like Adam Smith, Malthus thought that laissez-faire is necessary, but it cannot help the poor. To some, it might seem like Malthus was being cruel when he wrote, “When the wages of labour are hardly sufficient to maintain two children, a man marries and has five or six” (Malthus 141). Malthus thought that the peasants do not limit the amount of children they breed and hurt themselves in the long run. Malthus knew all of this because he worked at an English church and was well-acquainted with the mentality of the lower classes. His argument is strong due to the usage of math to backup his data. He explained how the population grows with a geometrical ratio while the food supplies do with a linear. His argument lacks the explanation of what can be done to prevent the peasants from rebelling after the government stops financially helping
Children had to work exhausting hours of repetitive and tiring work, withstanding beatings and sleep deprivation. The person interviewed believed that it was inhumane since he witnesses all of this while working at the age of eight. His argument is strong because he reflected on his own past difficulties that actually happened. In the Moral and Physical Dissipation, James Phillips Kay wrote, “Prolonged and exhausting labour, continued from day to day, and from year to year, is not calculated to develop the intellectual or moral faculties of man” (Kay 144). Overwhelming conditions in factories did not help anyone’s health or intelligence. They usually became weaker and received barely enough money to avoid starvation. Being a physician, James Phillips Kay had the qualifications to observe laborers from factories and to judge the deterioration of their health. Factory Discipline also mentioned how difficult it was for the leaders to coordinate all the uneducated workers. They had to use physical punishments occasionally, which caused the public to beg for factory reform. Similarly, during the French Revolution the first and second estates took advantage of the third estate by burdening them with taxes. From history, it is evident that poorly treating the poor can lead to violent uprisings. In Samuel Smiles’s Self Help, he wrote to improve the financial condition of people.