Using Adam Smith as a Smokescreen for Rip-Offs

“Here's what I don't get: The dealers are supposed to be businessmen, go-getters, entrepreneurs. They're supposed to take risks and reap the rewards. They're supposed to want the government to butt out and leave it to Adam Smith. If you believe the hype, these folks embody the can-do, roll-up-your-sleeves, sweat-of-the-brow business ethic that made America an economic superpower. But the reality is they are one of the most pampered and protected groups in the country. And we're all paying for it.”

Angus MacKenzie wrote the above (28 Jan) in “The Trouble with Dealers” in Motor Trend Community (here:

Comment
Don’t ya get it Angus? People who are in a complicit pact with lazy academics (who quote rather than bother reading Adam Smith) protect their monopoly profits (‘write your own pay cheque’), by subscribing to the predictable bluff that they should be left alone because Adam Smith said so (he didn’t).

It may be an attributed ‘sweat-of-the-brow business ethic’ in theory but it ain’t nothing more than a rip-off-the-consumer ploy.

How true: ‘the reality is they are one of the most pampered and protected groups in the country. And we're all paying for it’.

Adam Smith favoured competition; he didn’t appreciate what we call ‘rent seekers’ today. The fact is the quotation-happy motor dealers are the gainers. That's why Angus you don't get it. And your family name came from Scotland...