Ideas of Adam Smith, Niccolo Machiavelli, Karl Polanyi, Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Essay Example

Machiavelli reiterates that crimes may win an empire but they can never win glory moreover he believed necessary wars were just wars and that the arms of a nation are hallowed when it lacks other resources apart from fight. In addition, concerning the markets, Machiavelli considers increase of land and things to be core (Machiavelli 13-14). Rousseau believes in a monarchy that guarantees the needs and the universal will of its people are executed. He believes the pressing interest of a ruler is his most indispensible duty is observing the laws of which the individual is the minister and on which the whole authority is founded.

Moreover, he considers social actions to be reciprocal in nature thus impracticable for anyone to position himself beyond the law without relinquishing the advances of the law in a sovereign country. Rousseau believes that the government is not the master of the law but it is much of guarantor of the law and posses many means of inspiring love of it, which makes the talent of reigning. Rousseau believes that people are born amoral however, when people enter society they acquire the capacity for vice as well as the capability for virtue.

Rousseau’s analysis regarding vice is comprehensible and well developed which exemplifies that vice results from competition. According to Rousseau, human beings are born free but in many political societies they are subjected to a form of dependence that amounts to slavery. Moreover, Rousseau considers two kinds of inequality that include natural and contrived inequalities but only natural inequalities are acceptable. As well, Rousseau believes justice is impossible to achieve in a world that is stark of social inequality in addition he believes that concentrations of wealth increases inequality (Rousseau 8).

In wealth of nations, Smith closely ties liberation of the desire for wealth to commerce and free market, which he considered the most effective way of satisfying that desire, which is synonymous with Rousseau’s view on governance. Thus in Smith’s view, life is ceaselessly driven by desire, anxiety and fear hence life is eternally filled with disturbance and disquiet (Fitzgibbons 3). Smith considers people by nature to have a tendency for improving their circumstances through buildup of goods of affluence, status and power.

Smith considers the accumulation of wealth as means that jeopardizes tranquility as opposed to producing it, which is also synonymous with Rousseau regarding personal interest. Therefore, both perspectives of Smith and Rousseau consider the pursuits of wealth to be deeply misleading; for instance, Smith argues on the condition of the material world (Gudz 2). Polanyi in The Great Transformation clarified precincts of self-regulating markets and currently there is no reputable, intellectual hold for the proposition that markets by themselves result in competent, let alone equitable outcomes.

This view is also synonymous with Rousseau model which considered the concentration of wealth to be the cause of increase in inequality. Polanyi addresses a certain defect in self-regulating economy which involves the relationship between the economy and society in how economic systems affect the way people relate to one another. This view is also considered by Rousseau who believed accumulation of w