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Tag Archives: History
Final thoughts on Adam Smith’s 1784 Additions and Corrections to The Wealth of Nations
Happy hump day! I began my in-depth survey of Adam Smith’s 79-page pamphlet, Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith 1784), way … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, Economics, History, Philosophy, Politics, the-wealth-of-nations
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Death of a fabulist
To my mind, one of the most maddening aspects of the whole Jason Arday affair has been the business-as-usual progressive and pro-DEI biases of the mainstream media and of the blogosphere. Have you noticed, for example, how most of the … Continue reading
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Tagged Education, History, jason-arday, Philosophy, Politics
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Adam Smith and the mercantile system
Thus far these past few weeks (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), we have surveyed the first 11 additions in Adam Smith’s pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. … Continue reading
Tobacco, textiles, and wine: the immortal Adam Smith
Nota bene: This is the fifth installment of my multi-part review of Adam Smith’s 1784 pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, american-revolution, Economics, History, Politics, Trade, wine
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France, England, and the immortal Adam Smith
Nota bene: Today’s post contains the fourth installment of my multi-part review of Adam Smith’s 79-page pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of … Continue reading
Revisiting another Adam Smith problem
Nota bene: Today’s post contains the third installment of my multi-part review of Adam Smith’s 1784 pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of … Continue reading
Adam Smith and the division of labor: cure or curse?
The first three chapters of The Wealth of Nations (WN, I.i-iii) are devoted to the division of labor. Although Adam Smith will later have some bad things to say about the individual effects of the division of labor in Book … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, division-of-labor, Economics, History, Philosophy, Politics, specialization, the-wealth-of-nations
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Rousseau’s just-so story
Yesterday, I transcribed three separate passages from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Second Discourse, and I then asked: why would someone like Adam Smith have singled-out those three specific selections in his 1756 letter to the Edinburgh Review? For reference, Smith’s translation of … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, division-of-labor, History, just-so-story, Philosophy, rousseau
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Adam Smith counterfactual
A counterfactual is a statement about what would have happened if a past event had been different. It’s a “what if?” scenario, considering an alternative reality where something that actually occurred did not, or vice versa. On this note, below … Continue reading
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Tagged adam-smith, cognitive-dissonance, commissioner-of-customs, Economics, History
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The Lost Year
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 6 (“Adam Smith’s Lost Year: 1747”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (footnotes are below the fold): “There is a small but significant gap in Adam Smith’s biography: … Continue reading
prior probability 