Buddhist Develpment Economic Perspectives

However, later in “The Wealth of Nations” he explained that within this moral climate and legal framework, which evolved in the manner explained earlier, the presence of a different additional series of connecting links among the wealth seeking behaviour pattern of individuals ie those involved in the competitive economic process, so interconnect and control those behaviour patterns that although they result from and serve the acquisitive self-interest of the individuals, they fit together and make up a social-economic process of unconscious cooperation which tend to maximise the aggregate wealth and economic welfare of the entire society. Some, for example Taylor, try to develop a theory that moral sentiments and self-interest in Smith are consistent as the latter is to be operated within a social framework conditioned by the former. But in view of Smith’s expression that, ‘unless individuals are selfishly motivated, the very process of economic development would come to an end’, selfish motives should dominate in economic activities. In economic behaviour the self-interest emerges as the driving force of human beings, hence earlier mentioned moral sentiments lie dormant.