“People of the same trade seldom meet
together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in
a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices…though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from
sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such
assemblies; much less to render them necessary” (Book I, Ch. 10, S.82).
I suppose, this would have made Adam Smith, who certainly was a broad-minded thinker and no doctrinaire, an opponent of the EU.
“The viciously anti-democratic nature of the EU is quite easy to
explain: (1) the European Commission, despite being unelected, is the
executive of the EU and has the sole right to propose legislation. This
European Commission proposes and formulates legislation largely in
secret with committees filled with big businesses and corporate
interests …”
From a comment I made here:
Writes Adam Smith:
For more see here and here and here.