Ethics & Economics Adam Smith, considered by many to be the father of free-market capitalism, emphasized the importance of coming to grips with the fact that self-interest drives people. He points out that, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,but from their regard to their own interest”

However, Smith added a caveat However, Smith added a caveat.He categorically said such pursuits need to be constrained: Every man, so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

Such a pursuit was acceptable because according to Smith, if every one pursued self-interest, society would be better off, as if led by an invisible hand. That view infused the system of free-market capitalism

It is of considerable importance to business ethics that Adam Smith, preceded his writing of Wealth of Nations, the “bible of capitalism”, by publishing his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, in which the two basic virtues of any decent society – including, especially, modern market society, are justice and benevolence. Advocates of Adam Smith’s economics too often ignore his ethics, but the former is unworkable without the latter.

“For what purpose," he wrote in the Theory of Moral Sentiments" is all the toil and bustle, of this world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and pre-eminence?” The Wealth of the Nations provides his answer; all the grubby scrabbling for wealth and glory has its ultimate justification in the welfare of the common man.