Adam Smith’s most famous passage An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Is this:
It is not from the goodness of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their consideration of their own interests. We talk to ourselves, not to their personality but to their self-love, and we never talk to them about our needs but about their benefits.
Just a few sentences before it, however, Smith writes:
No one has ever seen a dog properly and purposefully exchange one bone with another. No one has ever seen one animal by its touch and natural cry represent another, this is mine, this is yours; I am willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to get something from a person or another animal, it has no other way to beg than to win the favor of those whose service it needs.
I wonder if Smith discounted the ability of animals or, at least, the ability of cats, to participate in trade.
Check out this heartwarming video. I found the idea that the cat thought it was exchanging something that someone else thought was valuable, a leaf, for something more valuable, a piece of fish, to be reasonable.
HT to my lovely wife, who is always on the lookout for great animal stories.
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