Thus, in the end, I propose, there is an Adam Smith problem. But it is not just an Adam Smith problem. It is also a David Hume problem, a Frances Hutcheson problem, a Hugo Grotius problem, a Denis Diderot problem, an Immanuel Kant problem. On the surface, the early modern texts are edifying discourses, striving to save society from moral decay by demonstrating a sound basis for ethics, carrying forward the same ages-old good fight for cooperation and sharing that the prophets and philosophers carried on in Biblical times and in ancient Greece. But on the operative level a transmutation occurs.
Ethics is rewritten to facilitate capitalism.
The ethics texts and the economics texts are indeed consistent with each other. But the reason why they are consistent is that the ethics texts do not mean what they seem to mean. The generous emotions they evoke are not the operative rules that decide cases and establish rights. Seeing the Adam Smith problem as I propose suggests an interpretation of what the Chilean social protest singer Victor Jara called the tremendous decency of the bourgeoisie. Jara made fun of the comfortable citizen, who, not content with owning property, having a good education, fine clothes, and fine manners, was also distinguished by a disarming personal charm, and even more than by charm by a fine moral character that Jara called tu tremenda decencia.