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, or the doctrine itself in The System.