The Gospel of Self-Interest

Why Incentives Beat Conscience, Every Time — and Why Pretending Otherwise Makes You a Mark, Not a Saint

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It isn’t always about being good. In fact, it rarely is.

Adam Smith — Enlightenment granddad of capitalism and perfectly comfortable cynic — accepted that people are not saints in disguise but creatures of appetite. Self-interest is our native tongue, and the smart society stops pretending otherwise. Better to adapt to the crooked grain of humanity than to sand it down into tyranny with the delusion that a few unblemished mandarins can dictate “virtue” to the…