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Tag Archives: History
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
Das Problem des Reichtums: What does Adam Smith mean by *wealth* in The Wealth of Nations?
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of my forthcoming survey of Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid: “’Wealth’, in the words of Robert L. Heilbroner, ‘is a fundamental concept in economics—indeed, perhaps the conceptual starting point for the discipline.’ … Continue reading
Update re: domestic constitutional violence in Los Angeles
As a follow-up to one of my previous posts on “Domestic Constitutional Violence: Los Angeles” (see here), I want to mention that a federal appellate court in California recently affirmed President Trump’s decision to deploy the California National Guard, ostensibly … Continue reading
prior probability 