But Adam Smith, the 18th century father of free market economics, was so scathingly critical of businessmen that it would be impossible to find a single favorable reference to them in his 900-page classic, The Wealth of Nations . Anyone who has driven in most big cities might feel there's an unmet need for more parking spaces. Doing so would mean fewer hospitals, fewer fire stations, and other buildings. The point Sowell constantly makes is that scarcity is mankind's perennial state of affairs. That being the case, in order to have more of one thing necessarily means having less of another.
Tradeoffs become a fact of life.