Files
markitect-main/examples/infospace-with-history/output/entities/benevolence.md
tegwick 2d1282a61e feat(infospace): flat canonical entity set with cross-chapter deduplication
Restructure entity storage from per-chapter subdirectories to a flat
canonical set in output/entities/. Each entity exists as a single file;
duplicates across chapters are detected by slug collision and skipped
(first occurrence wins). Chapter views use {{ include }} transclusion
to reference shared entity files.

Add @{existing_entities} macro to extract-entities template so the LLM
knows which entities already exist and focuses on genuinely new ones.
Refactor _call_llm() from _execute_llm() for callers that handle their
own file I/O. 41 unique entities from 4 chapters (2 duplicates removed).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-02-11 22:24:20 +01:00

946 B

Benevolence

Definition

The disposition to do good to others out of goodwill rather than self-interest. Smith argues that benevolence is an insufficient basis for economic organisation in a complex society. While a person may secure the friendship of a few through appeals to benevolence, they cannot rely on it to obtain the co-operation of the "great multitudes" they need in civilised life. Even beggars, who depend chiefly on benevolence for their subsistence, conduct most of their actual transactions through exchange.

Source Chapter

Book I, Chapter 2: "Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour"

Context

Benevolence serves as the foil to self-interest. Smith systematically argues that while benevolence exists, it cannot scale to support the complex interdependencies of a specialised economy, making self-interested exchange the necessary coordinating mechanism.

Economic Domain

General Theory