Adam Smith held that people pursue wealth for social regard, not necessity.
Evidence
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the less well known complement to his canonical work The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith observed that people pursue wealth not to “supply the necessities of nature” so much as to procure “superfluities” that satisfy the fundamental psychological imperative to be thought well of by others: “It is not wealth that men desire, but the consideration and good opinion that wait upon riches.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 437
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes and names the psychological motive behind conspicuous wealth — the pursuit of ‘consideration and good opinion’ rather than need.
- XREF: connects to: Smith held that states, unlike merchants, are not natural savers — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 302; Adam Smith’s economic man arises from language, reason, and interdependence, not naked self-interest. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 185