"Concern for the common good should impel us to find ways to cultivate human development in its richest diversity... Adam Smith... felt that it shouldn’t be too difficult to institute humane policies. In his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” he observed that “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”.. This broad tendency in human development seeks to identify structures of hierarchy, authority and domination that constrain human development, and then subject them to a very reasonable challenge: Justify yourself. If these structures can’t meet that challenge, they should be dismantled... Why should anyone defend illegitimate structures and institutions?... About 70 percent of the population, at the lower end of the wealth/income scale, has no influence on policy... Moving up the scale, influence slowly increases. At the very top are those who pretty much determine policy, by means that aren’t obscure. The resulting system is not democracy but plutocracy."
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Noam Chomsky, What is the Common Good? Truthout, January 7, 2014 (Adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky at Columbia University on December 6, 2013)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Common_good
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Common good
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