In this state, men's roughly equal "natural power," insatiably acquisitive nature for power and "glory," accompanied by limited resources, lead to competition: "if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies" (Hobbes, 4, 8, 7). Out of competition comes suspicion and unceasing insecurity. The inevitable result is a state of warfare, where "every man is an enemy to every other," and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Hobbes, 8). This view of human nature leads to Hobbes's vision of society as the solution. Self-interest creates incentives for men to escape this state of nature and seek peace by forming society and conforming to government. A coercive power in form of an artificial being, of which "the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution" are "joints;" "reward and punishment are the nerves," is established (Hobbes, 1). This embodiment supports Hobbes's argument that society exists to serve the ends of self-interest. .
Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, approves of Hobbes's view on self-interest as the key determination of human actions. Smith identifies labor productivity, largely determined by the "division of labor," as the primary source of national wealth (Smith, 3). A pin-maker without specialization could only make no more than twenty pins a day. However, if the work is completed in distinct operations, a pin-maker could multiply his original outputs by thousands of times. One might ask: what motivates this workforce specialization? The answer is parallel to Hobbes's response to what creates society: self-interest. Smith traces the principle back to human nature: "This division of labor is not originally the effect of any human wisdom" but arises from "a certain propensity in human nature to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another" (Smith, 11).