Smith Quotes

Smith Quotes

Monopoly...is a great enemy to good management.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I Chapter XI Part I p148

The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price.

The Wealth of Nations, , Book I, Chapter VII, p63

The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got.

The Wealth of Nations, , Book I, Chapter VII, p63

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies...

A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.

An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole.

The Wealth of Nations, , Book I, Chapter X, p130

To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to opprress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

The Wealth of Nations, p267

On competition:

The natural price, or the price of free competition...is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion indeed, but for any considerable time together.