David Hume Adam Smith Is Term Paper

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This psychological egalitarianism was how he differed from many of the economists of his day. He did not make a distinction between the different classes of men, but believed that all men look for happiness, which included action and pleasure.

Hume's historical viewpoint included the realization that changes in economic life resulting from the expansion of trade carried with them changed demands on the entire population, and in the case of the workers, these demands would be met only if there was enough motivation. Workers, like other men, would only assume their responsibilities if guaranteed adequate reward, which as with the middle class will produce increased desire. With an expectation of a better future, men would exert themselves.

In opposition to his colleagues, Hume argued that the lower classes were equals of all men and that the betterment of society was based upon satisfying of the needs of the poor. He stressed that a developing society depended on the material happiness of its workers. For if the poor were treated as dissenters against civilized values, their punishment would just add to their discontent and lack of work. In stressing that the lower classes did not respond to the demands of the middle class due to the lack of incentives, Hume encouraged another way to view the poors' motivation, and a new economic policy based on the working laborer.

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As Viner noted in Studies in the Theory of International Trade:

After Hume and Smith had written, mercantilism was definitely on the defensive and was wholly or largely rejected by the leading English economists. That their victory was as great as it was, was due largely, of course, to the force of their reasoning and the brilliance of their exposition, but it was due also in large part to the fact that, even before they wrote, mercantilism as a body of economic doctrine had already been disintegrating because of dissension within the ranks of its adherents and attacks by earlier critics. An important element in its collapse, especially in its monetary phases, was the development of the theory of the self-regulating mechanism of international specie distribution. The most influential formulation of this theory in England prior to the nineteenth century was by Hume......

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