This is an interesting thread. I  want to raise a question about Smith that 
is relevant, I think. In the opening scene of  Wealth, notice that the 
disposition to truck and barter is evidently a disposition to trade for the 
sake of trading -  i.e. it is not, in the first place, instrumentally 
guided at all.  Why not?  I think the reason might be this: Smith argues 
that differences between people are the result, not the precondition, 
of  trade and the division of labor.  But then if we are all alike 
originally, there would be no obvious advantages to trade. This is why a 
love of trade for its own sake might be necessary - to get the ball 
rolling.  I know this is a deviant interpretation, but what do people think?

The evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, in *The Mating Mind*, argues 
that much of what is distinctively human, including language and art may 
have had its origin in sexual selection - like the peacock's tale (he 
argues, actually, for mutual sexual selection in the human case.)  So the 
"for-its-own-sake-ness" of much human activity, including, if Smith is 
right, trade itself, originally, may be not a bug, but part of the design.

Kevin Quinn