After reading this week’s passages, I immediately noticed connections between Joseph Addison’s The Royal Exchange and David Hume’s essay On Commerce. Both texts emphasize the possible benefits foreign trade can have on domestic pleasures and life, while David Hume also points out nations that prosper economically with less international business, such as China. Hume argues for natural, gradual changes in an economy to balance a leader’s power and the happiness of the general population, and that increasing wealth gaps, alluding to late stage capitalism, only damage society by keeping the poor in perpetual poverty without any sort of social mobility. Bernard Mandeville further builds upon the incentives behind human collaboration in his essay An Enquiry Into The Origin of Moral Virtue by stating that humans have an easier time providing services to the public good if there is a clear reward system in place. Additionally, Adam Smith’s chapter in The Wealth of Nations was especially interesting in how it pointed out the specialization system that humans have over other animals. The diversity of human skill sets and strengths leads to people offering services in what they are best at to others who may not have developed that skill. This exchange of skills and goods further reflects on David Hume’s essay, as it references different nations being able to provide goods not readily available in one region for goods that they themselves don’t possess. 

A quote that I focused on is in Adam Smith’s comparisons between humanity and animals, in which he states “Those different tribes of animals, however, though all of the same species, are of scarce any use to one another. The strength of the mastiff is not, in the least, supported either by the swiftness of the greyhound, or by the sagacity of the spaniel, or by the docility of the shepherd’s dog” (28). Smith uses an example of dogs’ independence to indicate that other forms of life don’t benefit from one another’s talents at all, yet there are several examples in nature that contradict this. Bees help pollinate and spread the reproduction of flowers, while flowers provide bees with nectar to produce honey. Ants eat the honeydew of aphids in exchange for protecting them from predators. Even clownfish (Such as in Finding Nemo) utilize anemone as shelter while also cleaning the anemone on the inside. This relationship differs from parasitism, in which only one party benefits. These examples in nature showcase animals using the specialties of other organisms advantageously to improve their quality of life and survival. While Adam Smith is correct in his statement that humans benefit from a division of skills, win-win exchange is found in other species as well.

My reaction to Bernard Mandeville’s preface and poem made me ponder about how many of the selfish and flawed things around us actually contribute to the public good. As he discusses the trashy streets of London, I think of the scammers of New York, America’s healthcare privatization, and the multi billion dollar junk food industry. I find it hard to believe at first that all of the inherently selfish and greedy actions people do can also stimulate growth in an economy, as his poem about the bees shows the opposite happening. My existential dread became even bigger when he mandeville stated that even truly virtuous men are motivated by ego: “pleasure, together with the occasion of it, are as certain signs of pride” (57). The world is a massive race of people competing against one another to succeed, even here at Brooklyn College. Those who do well for others are ultimately motivated by making themselves feel better? What even is kindness then?

A discussion question to ask the class: Referencing David Hume’s essay, why doesn’t a nation’s abundance of natural resources completely guarantee a nation’s wealth and expansion?