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Why Read Adam Smith Today? Enduring Wisdom
Unlike many other species who confront nature red in tooth and claw, we are not physically equipped to survive the cold or combat nature naked and unarmed. We do not possess by nature a fur coat, let alone sharp teeth and claws. We stand naked before nature vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and the kindness of predators. However, what we lack in natural protections we more than make up for in our ability to cooperate with one another.
Mary Wollstonecraft, from Paris to Scandinavia
September 25, 2024 Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), had by 1796 come to different sentiments. Roos Slegers describes how Wollstonecraft's travels around Europe during and after the French Revolution changed her beliefs about rebellion, education, morals, and manners. "Wollstonecraft shares Rousseau’s desire to escape from oppressive society, but rambling through the remote parts of Sweden and Norway she comes to the conclusion that a middle ground is necessary to develop one’s intellect, one’s morals, and one’s taste."
Hostile factions and political instability
"The problem of faction seems to be when they undermine the systems of which they are a part, and this relates to the concern which Ryan has rightly identified that Smith has with the stability of institutions over time and of public life more generally."
Use and exchange value, consumer surplus and social welfare
"[N]o authority can make optimal choices for consumers. Adult and healthy consumers should be let free to choose their preferred bundle of goods that they can afford."
Nicholas Snow on Prohibition
Do you ever take a moment to think about the fact that Americans, the people of the land of the free, spent 13 years under Prohibition ? Did you know that Americans used to seriously “drink like a fish”?