On self- and social-interest: Reflections on voting choice

“IT IS not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

This is the most famous line from the book of the Father of Economics, Adam Smith, “The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” that talks about SELF-INTEREST. Furthermore, Smith explains that a rational economic being looks after their best self-interest.

Many who read and heard this famous line of Adam Smith think that self-interest is synonymous to selfish. To a certain extent, it is because it is basically thinking of the benefits one gets from an economic activity. However, in Economics, the element of social interest is integral to self-interest.

Social interest implies that with the benefit one gets from an economic transaction, there are others that also benefit, like when the buyer consumes a product, he gets satisfied. In the same way, the supplier also derives satisfaction from earning revenues. Consequently, the manufacturer earns from what the supplier have sold to the consumer.

Furthemore, the farmer who sold the manufacturer the raw materials also benefited. The farmer then uses what he earned from selling the raw materials to buying a final good, and so he not only completes a cycle but also starts another one.

This is the ideal concept of self-interest and social interest. However, this is not what is happening at present. Sadly, selfinterest has become a synonym of being selfish.

The world has become a very dangerous place when people only prioritized their own self-interest or to be more precise, own selfish interest.

Many countries, including ours, are governed by people whose selfish interests take precedence over the wellbeing of the greater majority, whose biases for or against something or someone have been used as basis for not honoring the rights of others, who take and use money from the public coffers as if it’s their own.

Even the smallest unit of society, the family, has not been spared from this economic plague. Marriage bonds are severed. Children are separated from their parents. Families are broken. Siblings fighting one another. For what reason?

For their own selfish interest. Husbands/ wives leave their spouses for someone else because they are not satisfied anymore. Parents go abroad for so called greener pastures, saying it’s for their children’s future, but really it’s their comfort that they are more concerned of. Siblings have squabbles on the inheritance from their parents, one feeling that he should get more since he thought he got less when their parents were still alive.

And since the campaign period is already at hand, what better time to keep self(ish) interests in mind and as one of the criteria that we, voters, can use to help us choose for the candidates that we will elect into public office.

In this connection, starting today and for the coming weeks, I will be sharing some of my thoughts about some candidates who I will probably vote for and in my capacity, I endorse.