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Summary: happiness
Review: It's a beautiful book, the Don Quijote of the Economy in the sense that is the best book I have ever read on macro and microeconomy; and it's amazing that he didn't even know the meaning of these words.Nothing to say about the invisible hand theory, but much to say about the salary fund theory, refused by most of the nowadays economists jus because they don't understand,maybe, the real meaning of the idea. the 35 hours model that is to be put in work by france Government is the same as saying that salary fund theory should work because the idea laying on its spirit is this one. when an idea works, it remains the same through time even though it changes its name.I wished every economist in the world could read this book to wide the tight point of view that economy schools causes us.
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Summary: Great edition beware it is edited
Review: Its a bit difficult to make a comment on the writtings for validity of Adam Smith. What I can say is that this book is a book that has been edited. If you are looking for a specific comment or quote you may not find the exact representation in this book. While this book isn't missing anything, wordages have been changed, be aware of this. The typeset is in an old fashioned type setting and does add a bit of charm to the book. I disliked that the book did not note that it wasn't the original text, for that reason I give it a 4.
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Summary: Adam Smith was truly a man for all season and for all time
Review: Probably the most important book ever written has as much to say to us today as it did in 1766 . Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nation" establishes the theoretical framework for Capitalism covering every aspect of an economic system that has created the highest standard of living known to man. Adam Smith shows how the interplay between labor, stock and land serve to generate the wealth of a nation. The keys to wealth are freedom, productive men, productive stock, and productive land. Smith says that the role of government is threefold - to protect the land from foreign invasion, enforce contracts and maintain a physical and legal infrastructure that promotes commerce and investment. Government produces nothing and therefore the expense of government reduces the wealth of a nation. Taxes are akin to a proportional reduction in the productivity of labor, stock and land and so should be kept at a minimum in order to increase the wealth of a nation. Any government role beyond the promotion and protection of investment reduces the wealth of a nation and of its people Adam Smith would oppose the many government programs that litter the landscape of the Federal Government today. Welfare, Social Security, education spending by the government, and other non-defense or infrastructure related expenditures diminish the productivity of the people and consequently their wealth. The majority of the people in the United States would have been much wealthier had it not been for these programs.
Adam Smith was also a proponent of free trade. He understood that countries varied in the productivity of the land and the people and that only through free trade could the advantages inherent in different lands and peoples be harnessed to increase the wealth of nations. He opposed guilds and unions which only protected the few at the expense of the many and consequently reduced the wealth of a nation by reducing the productivity of its people.
Adam Smith was truly a man for all season and for all time. It's unfortunate that our politicians and educators are more familiar and enamored by the idiot Karl Marx than they are with Adam Smith. For if they revered Adam Smith as much as they revere Marx we would all be wealthier and happier.
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Summary: Read the original - get beyond second-hand truisms
Review: Some books have entered so deeply into our culture that they affect the way we think whether or not we have read them. The Wealth of Nations is certainly one of these books. And like most such books - the Bible, Shakespeare, the works of Freud or Jung, the Bill of Rights - the Wealth of Nations does not say what you think it does.The fact is, those who most earnestly revere Adam Smith are not always those who have read his works most carefully. Which is why reading The Wealth of Nations is important for those who think about the role of capitalism and free markets in our nations and in our world.
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Summary: Read the original - get beyond second-hand truisms
Review: Some books have entered so deeply into our culture that they affect the way we think whether or not we have read them. The Wealth of Nations is certainly one of these books. And like most such books - the Bible, Shakespeare, the works of Freud or Jung, the Bill of Rights - the Wealth of Nations does not say what you think it does. The fact is, those who most earnestly revere Adam Smith are not always those who have read his works most carefully. Which is why reading The Wealth of Nations is important for those who think about the role of capitalism and free markets in our nations and in our world.
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Summary: Where did that description come from?
Review: Talk about revisionist history! Adam Smith deeply suspicious of capitalism--a closet socialist? I don't think so! Smith argues that even the darker impulses of the human mind generate benefit in a free society. If you want to get rich in a free society, the only way to do it is to come up with something incredibly useful to humankind. Smith wasn't distrustful of capitalism--he was distrustful of statism and merchantalism, of government handouts and bureaucrats who know best. That was the order of the day in Smith's time. The government regulations for the French textile industry between 1666 and 1730 took up 2,000 pages. *That's* what Smith was distrustful of, not capitalism!
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Summary: ebook: Hope you don't need it right away! AMAZON SLOW!
Review: The book is a classic and needs no review from me. However, if you thought that you could download the book from Amazon.com quickly, you will probably be sadly mistaken. I've been waiting 30 minutes so far and still my order is "being processed". No other eBook site on the internet takes more than a few seconds after entering your credit card. If you need this or any ebook in a hurry. Take a look at the other sites out there. Evidently, Amazon understands the package sending business a lot better than they do the electronic media download business!
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Summary: Recent scandals disprove the
Review: The greek tradition found virtue in the pursuit of rational self interest. That tradition later found expression in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in which is posited a "rational self-interest" operating as an "invisible hand" upon "free markets". Recent accounting crimes and corporate scandals, however, amount to enormous empirical evidence that "laissez faire" capitalism is a myth and the "invisible hand" is mere "wishful thinking". It is obvious that there is no "invisible hand" which militates against crooks, charlatans, and fast buck artists now seen to have firmly ensconced themselves as much in the board rooms as among sleazy fly-by-nighters. Markets left to their own devices, it would seem, trend toward oligopoly in which oligarchs effect political plutocracy through the exercise of sheer political muscle, intimidation, fraud, and outright bribery. There is, in fact, no "invisible hand" by which the rich and powerful may be moderated. If a ruling cabal is to be moderated it must be done by political action. This is less a criticism of Smith himself than of modern conservatives who merely find in Smith --ex post facto --a rationalization for rapacious and monopolistic behavior. Smith is no more to be faulted than is Darwin for the excess of "Social Darwinism" (neither Social nor Darwin) by which a certain "robber baron" mentality justifies all manner of corporate crookedness and sleazy practices. Moreover, Smith himself feared the rise of monopoly power --a fear which modern conservative commentary either omits or misunderstands. The picture is complicated, however by Immanuel Kant who assailed the pursuit of self interest in favor of "good in and of itself" --a "categorical imperative". It is a moral standard that no one, of course, can live up to. Kant, nevertheless, became the other great influence upon American conservative thought --though I cannot give most contemporary conservatives credit for having actually read Kant or --for that matter --understanding him. Yet --Kant may be found lurking beneath the ideological surface of the extreme right-wing and the religious right which seeks a "transcendental" reality and morality which they would impose on the rest of us --whether we like it or not. It is unfortunate that Kant himself defined this "transcendant reality" --which he calls the noumena --as being unknowable. If follows, by definition, that one cannot make meaningful statements about it, but that has not kept righteous ideologues from deducing value judgements an "unknowable" and imposing those values judgements on others. We are given a choice of two mutually exclusive alternatives: "selfishness" or "selfless transcendentalism". Neither position, however, is entirely true and neither is completely understood even by the conservative mentality that espouses them. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is no more valid than Laffer's "trickle down" theory and it is highly doubtful that even Kant lived up to his own moral dictum --though I credit Kant with sincerity but doubt it among his followers. I rather think that "mankind" is neither entirely selfish or entirely selfless. The truth is most likely found in the middle. The work of mathematician John Nash, celebrated of late in the motion picture "A Beautiful Mind", wrote a brilliant paper on "binding agreements" that casts grave doubts upon many "conservative" fables, shibboleths, and fairy tales --including those whose origins lie in "mutually exclusive" intellectual traditions. Like Patton surrounded on one side by Russians and the other by Nazis, it attacks in both directions at once.
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Summary: A seminal book in Economics
Review: The Scottish Adam Smith is certainly the most important economists of all times and is the founder of modern economic thought, being "The Wealth of the Nations" his major work, where he introduces to the general public of his time - the book was first published in 1776 - new concepts and ideas as "competitive advantage", "divison of labour", "the power of the invisible hand", and many others still powerfull today, even accounting for the changes happened in the world economy and politics. From this starting point, a crucial juncture in the world economy, that is, the beginning of the industrialisation in England, many renowed economists and social scientists construed their theories. To name a few? Karl Marx, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and many others acknowledge the importance of Adam Smith's work to their theories. Besides this opus, he did a lot in the field of philosophy, but was to become known as the father of the Classic school of economics. One of not so many Economics excelent Classic books to read. Enjoy it.
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Summary: Now more than ever, people need to relate to this book
Review: The simple points upon which this book is based might be much easier to understand today than when it was written, because a large part of the growth of the world economy has been based on the ideas about the growth of capital which this book assumed as the fundamental surplus value of economic activity. Less than a century later, Karl Marx was able to demonstrate, in his book, THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, how vacuous the ideas of good and bad, as they are usually applied in political economy, turn out to be in practice. Americans have largely accepted the notion of a consumer society totally dependent on copyright and trade laws to protect the value of the entertainment and related therapeutic products which it produces. What might be most upsetting to readers of this book, that someone like myself could use it to reflect on the events of 9/11/2001 as a challenge to such modern assumptions, as if the policing powers which maintain the world financial situation of today have more to fear from an examination of how this book treats consumption than from the usual lessons based on the growth of wealth, might make this an unacceptable view of what this book actually says. When this book was written, Adam Smith was able to combine economic ideas about the distribution and production (which he considered the highest good) of articles of commerce, in contrast to "the bad effects of the monopoly," in a way that caused thinking people in Britain to believe that the world would be materially better off if the American colonies were free of rules which required those who produced all the tobacco from Maryland and Virginia to sell it in or through Great Britain. Adam Smith was worried that capital maintained to store this product in London was depriving England of the opportunity to produce goods that would generate more wealth. "At the port of London, indeed, it is commonly sold for ready money. The rule is, Weigh and pay. At the port of London, therefore, the final returns of the whole round-about trade are more distant than the returns from America by the time only that goods may lie unsold in the warehouse; where, however, they may sometimes lie long enough." The American revolution was greeted by economic free traders as an event likely to cause a great increase in the wealth of nations, and the normally victorious political element maintains a strong belief in this fiscal ideology. The current situation might be closer to "the time only which the goods may lie unsold in the warehouse." Near the end of Book IV, "Of Systems of Political Economy," Chapter VII, "Of Colonies," there was a frightening example of how bad things might get to be. "In Spain and Portugal the bad effects of the monopoly, aggravated by other causes, have perhaps nearly overbalanced the natural good effects of the colony trade." Plenty of things went wrong, causing a large portion of the population to feel that they were victims of circumstances, " . . . but above all, that irregular and partial administration of justice, which often protects the rich and powerful debtor from the pursuit of his injured creditor, and which makes the industrious part of the nation afraid to prepare goods for consumption of those haughty and great men to whom they dare not refuse to sell upon credit, and from whom they are altogether uncertain of repayment." Certainly, a great deal of money is in circulation today, and a tremendous amount is considered working capital, capable of producing many things that people might want, but the routine search for contraband includes cash in an amount exceeding $10,000, the amount which might be capable of buying a large amount of illegal substances. Police are actually so unfamiliar with cash transactions that large amounts might be held as evidence, until the police have been convinced that they have no reason to suspect the person who had the money of being involved in any sort of laundering activity. When Adam Smith was writing, his work was as shocking to those controlling the monopolies of his day as radical protests of today rile the police on the beat today, whose confiscation of vehicles, which are sometimes temporary, to see if they were used to transport illegal substances, is not considered in any way similar to hijacking airplanes in order to crash them into buildings which symbolize a violation of the right of the people to personal pleasure in a manner which averts the collapse of society as we know it. This hardly makes more sense than those who expected seizure of everybody's major assets to solve society's problems.
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