the guests are samuel "the wealth of fleischacker from chicago and is a professor at the university of illinois in chicago and is also president of the international adam smith society. professor fleischacker, what is that society? >> guest: that was a society founded -- that is a society founded about 15 years ago to encourage more scholarly interests in smith. one of the mall's was the fumes society which did help ratchet up interest especially among philosophers and david hume. smith is of interest to not just philosophers or economists to the intellectual historians, to the literary theorists often these days and we encourage the study of smith from all and no political perspective. that is to say we try to stay away from the political views of smith for ideological purposes and simply encourage the scholarly work on what he had to say in these various areas and we have conferences' at least once a year and also try to encourage scholarly work in various other forms. >> host: you mentioned david hume twice. who is he? >> guest: david hume is one of the most important philosophers m

it's a beautiful idea. >> host: samuel fleischacker. >> guest: can i jump in for a second? i agree with most of what russell said. the exact meaning for the idea of the invisible hand is very contentious among smith's colors these days. some say it refers to the divine. smith uses at exactly three times in all his work and in one case it does clearly refer to the divine here in the wealth of nations many people and i would be among them would say there is no reference to the divine. it's just a metaphor that he is found useful elsewhere. whether there's any kind of religious background to his economic theory as i've said is a very controversial. i think russell's main point is the one to focus on here, whether there is or not smith gives us a purely natural secular account of how orders can arise about anybody intending them. and for the most part, how individual action can for the most part pretty something quite good for society as a whole without people intending it. now one thing that smith has in mind, and this is the one thing i want to add to what russell said, that

it's a beautiful idea. >> host: samuel fleischacker. >> guest: can i jump in for a second? i agree with most of what russell said. the exact meaning for the idea of the invisible hand is very contentious among smith's colors these days. some say it refers to the divine. smith uses at exactly three times in all his work and in one case it does clearly refer to the divine here in the wealth of nations many people and i would be among them would say there is no reference to the divine. it's just a metaphor that he is found useful elsewhere. whether there's any kind of religious background to his economic theory as i've said is a very controversial. i think russell's main point is the one to focus on here, whether there is or not smith gives us a purely natural secular account of how orders can arise about anybody intending them. and for the most part, how individual action can for the most part pretty something quite good for society as a whole without people intending it. now one thing that smith has in mind, and this is the one thing i want to add to what russell said, is th

. >> host: samuel fleischacker, this tweet given that i want you to respond to. in your view, what would smith think of the great society, affirmative action, welfare? >> guest: that would take a very long time to answer. >> host: you have 13 seconds. >> guest: i've written two books on it. the short answer is those are all issues that were not remotely on the table at the moment he died at some of them were on the table within ten years after he died. that was a huge debate about poor law, with the government who should aid the poor which he didn't get to participate in because he died a little too early. my own view is that among the things that our government could do and should do if they could do a while was help the poor reaches condition in which they could participate on the same level as everybody else in the market. in my view would be that he would support something like universal health care today for instance although their many scythians who would disagree with me. >> guest: you're crazy, sam. >> guest: he can be read in both ways i think because he

c-span hosts samuel fleischacke and russell roberts. then wednesday, a look at the global economy today .... >> talks about his efforts at transfer his waste generating commercial carpet company into one with no environmental footprint by the year 2020. barnes & noble booksellers in atlanta is the host of this event. it is about 45 minutes. >> a lot of interface people here will pack the audience. thank you all for being here. just did brief introduction. in 1994, 15 years ago, i challenged the tiny task force of interface people, 16 or 17 people, to lead our company to sustainability. which we defined as operating our petroleum intensive company in such a way as to take from the earth nothing, not naturally and rapidly renewable by the earth, and to do no harm to the biosphere. take nothing, do no harm. in other words, zero footprint. we eventually chose 2020 for the target year to reach zero footprint. here we are 15 years into that journey of a 26 year long journey, to 2020, and we are better than 60 percent of the way. up that high