Adam Smith
Re-founds attestation as the impartial, well-informed spectator and the coercion line as justice-vs-beneficence; its one internal critique, aggregated sympathy launders rank, is designed against.
Edition read. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, read at the source.
What we took
Where the Wealth of Nations disciplined the economy, Moral Sentiments re-founds the measurement layer. Value is decentralised, sympathy-formed and perspectival; attestation becomes the impartial, well-informed spectator, evidence about a standard that can overrule a biased crowd, not a ministry number, and the coercion charter is justice-vs-beneficence: compel only where the absence does "real positive hurt," leaving meaning and generosity as soft-power only.
Where we diverge, and how we answer
Its one internal critique is designed against: aggregated sympathy is biased, it "sympathises more with joy than with sorrow" and "founds the distinction of ranks", so naïve attestation would launder rank, amplifying the very inequality the doctrine exists to unwind. Countered by mandatory status-bias correction and an envy/malice filter.
The net position
On substance Smith's moral philosophy is an ancestor; on the measurement layer its architect-and-critic, the state can never be a value sensor, only a disciplined impartial spectator.
Every position is read at the source. See the whole register on Lineage & Critique · The System.