He felt, in the Theory of Moral Sentiment that human beings can control themselves. The Church used to be the moral constraint and there was a big debate about getting rid of it. Adam Smith disagreed. He had faith that the empathic side of human behavior would be present to balance out the self-interest side. He was not right about this, unfortunately.

Our poorer living conditions provide the necessary conditions for inventing technologies that would alleviate our difficult life conditions. Progress has principally been about making our human lives more comfortable but beyond a certain threshold, self-interest started to runaway as technology allowed us to go far beyond survival.