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My Dear Friends,
I look upon your age with admiration and astonishment. You enjoy conveniences and comforts that the barons and princes of my time could not have imagined. And yet you track your sleep as if peace could be graphed, chase productivity as if rest were a moral failing, and wake to voices urging you to optimize every hour and maximize every potential—yet seldom pause to ask: Why?
This is an imagined letter from Adam Smith to the Americans of 2026. The letters in this series are constructed from Smith’s own words and ideas, primarily those in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. All quotations are verbatim and paraphrases are faithful to Smith’s views. Learn more about the sources here.
The question
It is the same question I asked students for years, and the one I posed in my first book in 1759:
For what is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, power, and pre-eminence? To what purpose is all this labour and fatigue?
My students replied, as many of you might: “I work to survive.”
But even in my time, this explanation failed. As I wrote then:
“The wages of the meanest labourer can supply the necessities of nature. . . . They afford him food and clothing, the comfort of a house and of a family.”
It is even more true for you. Your prosperity exceeds ours by a staggering margin.
Most of you do not push yourselves to the brink of exhaustion merely for shelter and bread. Necessity cannot explain ten-hour days, restless nights, and the constant pursuit of more.
Something else is driving you—a force that has stirred human ambition in every age, under every condition.
The simple answer
You work so hard because you long to be seen. You crave to be observed, admired, esteemed—to gain the approval of others. You do not “toil and bustle” long hours for the simple ease and pleasures that wealth provides.
And because wealth, power, and rank attract admiration, many people pursue these distinctions as the surest path to esteem. They imagine that if they can win enough approval from others, contentment will follow.
But this belief leads directly to a great deception.
The great deception
You imagine the splendor of the successful—their homes, comforts, and titles—and suppose that the admiration they receive must be proof of happiness.
This illusion ensnares the poor man’s son in my parable. He looks upon the rich, imagines their contentment and happiness, and devotes his life to reaching that summit. He sacrifices rest, neglects his family, endures anxiety, and forfeits leisure—all for the tranquility he believes awaits him at the top.
But when he arrives, he discovers the truth.
Admiration flickers and fades. It moves with fashion, envy, and constant comparison. It is the most uncertain of possessions. It gives brief moments of pride, followed by long stretches of unease, for the one who depends on it always feels in danger of sinking in others’ estimation.
And because such admiration rests on appearances, it demands continual performance—an endless effort to display whatever spectators momentarily approve.
Yet ambition itself is not the problem. The problem comes when it is aimed at the wrong desire.
But the desire that misleads you also reveals something profound.
The deeper truth
Beneath the wish to be admired lies a quieter longing: the desire to be worthy of admiration.
You want not only to be loved, but to be lovely; not only to be praised, but to be praiseworthy.
These two desires are easy to confuse.
The love of praise seeks the opinions of others. The love of praiseworthiness seeks inner integrity.
One depends on spectators. The other depends on conscience.
One is fleeting and hollow. The other is steady and deeply satisfying.
Much of human dissatisfaction comes from pursuing the first while neglecting the second.
But how do you know when you are truly praiseworthy and not merely flattered? For this, you must look within.
The quiet observer within
Imagine a quiet observer within you—a fair, disinterested judge who sees your motives as clearly as your actions. This impartial spectator is not dazzled by wealth. Not moved by applause. It asks: Have you acted with justice? With benevolence? With self-command? With due regard for others?
The impartial spectator’s approval brings a kind of tranquility that the praise of the world cannot match. It is internal, stable, and independent of external admiration.
True satisfaction comes not from wealth, titles, accolades, or applause, but from acting in harmony with the impartial spectator’s standards.
The right kind of ambition
When your labour serves the desire to be worthy rather than merely admired, everything changes. Ambition becomes a source of meaning rather than anxiety. Hard work brings satisfaction rather than exhaustion.
So, work hard, by all means—but first ask what desire your work serves. Ask not, “Will this impress others?” but rather “Will this satisfy the impartial spectator within?”
Your happiness depends not on being admired, but on becoming admirable.
Your humble servant,
Adam Smith
Ross Levine is the Booth Derbas Family/Edward Lazear Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-director of Hoover’s Financial Regulation Working Group. He is a founding member of the Hoover Program on the Foundations for Economic Prosperity. Levine is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.