by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: June 28, 2009   Last Updated: October 14, 2009

As consumers develop reliance on suppliers they correspondingly lose their liberty in comparison to non-reliance on any external sources of production. They may choose to believe that liberty means being controlled by the government and global corporations. If they are not good environmentalists and neighbors maybe that's a good thing, yet fundamentally its slavish.

David Hume was Adam Smith's instructor and lifelong friend. It is not certain how much impact the philosopher had upon the formation of Adam Smith's thought upon capital and politics, but these were lofty intellectual circles for the time, and Hume's ideas were revolutionary in his own field of philosophy, as was appropriate following a revolutionary era in England when the revolution of the late 1600's had reduced imperial power to regulate trade.

It would be somewhat obtuse to simply accept the proposition that 'effects' of supply and demand, or of demand in relation to supply have upon the 'concept' of liberty, much less upon actual liberty, as if effects abstracted from demands and supply situations in whatever circumstances affect general perceptions or beliefs in the conceptual arena. probably Adam Smith and David Hume were not so disposed either, to regard the relationships of cause and effect as being substantial, or even meaningful in a conceptual area as if thought were pre-determined by supply and demand themselves and that liberty as a concept in the causal sequence of trielectical nomination of thought synthetically evolved the concept of liberty in various shades.

Let's consider something of what Hume said in his last days to Adam Smith visiting at his home on August 8th (Hume dies on the 22nd)

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smith a/humedead.htm

from Adam Smith's report '

Mr. Hume's magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that, appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes. He answered, "Your hopes are groundless. An

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