How Adam Smith Became A Capitalist Icon
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- Опубликовано: 17 янв 2023
- Guest: Glory Liu is a lecturer in social studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism.
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We endure thousands of minutes of youtube content to come across these 45 of truly, truly valuable stuff. Thank you Mitch y Glory.
Thank you Glory Liu for an excellent presentation of your work as well as Adam Smith’s. Both will have me looking for more.
Your oral presentation here implies that if an audio presentation of your book is warranted, you are the one to do it.
I am living in Edinburgh where Smith is buried. A fascinating tale told by Glory Liu. On the question of the pronunciation of Kirkcaldy my daughter, who lives here and is 26 didn't know how to pronounce it properly till last week.
Thank you for an enlightening presentation and illuminating discussion! Ms. Glory Liu's book is a superb scholarly work which we enjoy thoroughly.
Good job greetings from Scotland 🏴
Letters & Politics with this and other programs provides an invaluable service. I particularly enjoy the selection of interviewees and the interviewer's soothing tone asking questions that are on point and tightly worded, helping guests to explore their central concerns.
Once again I am struck by Mitch's interviewing skills. He asks a question and is patient while his subject answers. So many interviewers seem to argue with the subject to reinforce previously conceived ideas. I was hoping Ms. Liu would comment on the Adam Smith quote by Noam Chomsky in "Requiem for the American Dream." It goes something like, "everything for me and nothing for anyone else." I have thought of AS as a Villain because on that. It seems I was wrong.
You should check out Noam Chomsky's excerpt "Education is Ignorance" (if you search for it add Noam Chomsky and Adam Smith to your Google search for good measure). He talks about how Adam Smith is being used to, effectively, do hero worship, when his works like Wealth of Nations have some pretty scathing critiques of free markets deeper into the book. It's very similar to what Liu is saying here, but this was in 1995.
yes indeed-Mitch is a master of a difficult skillset-
Excellent ! Thank You ! 🧑🏾🏫🤓📚
Great interview! Thank you.
Too true you needvto read the book not the sound bites .He was quite critical of emerging capitalism.
I think you're misreading Smith, mainly because you have not completely put him in context and you can't place yourself in his shoes, owing to your training and prejudices.
I also noticed that you did not ONCE mention the revolution (since his day) in our understanding of what constitutes money. His world was different than ours in multiple ways, but very notable in this regard.
Smith was a Christian. You two (I presume) are likely not. We can all agree that a moral posture IS related to humans being both individual and tribal (social) creatures, but we know there will always be tension between selfish (individual) desires and recognition that we at the same time belong to and owe consideration of our group nature and its obligations. Having a population reared in a climate of ethics and moral rectitude is not to be despised or ignored.
This video made many mentions of wealth gaps, non-equity, and poverty, but nowhere did you mention the need for a treatise such as....An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Poverty of Nations.
That's obviously a simpler task. The FIVE (I was going to say 3, originally, but five gives more flesh to the carcass) primary factors in creating poverty can be deduced from comparing some before and after stories (for nations) and cherry picking some successful as well as "failed" societies. I could have added "rule of law" and a sense of fair play to the list, too, but we all know that tyrannous systems make laws to suit themselves. I'd be happy to flesh out details if any are curious.
These five are: pervasive IGNORANCE of much of the population and LACK OF MORAL COHESION, a society DIVIDED BY CLASS AND RACE, governmental TYRANNY, and a FIAT MONETARY system.
You also claim that Smith was not a capitalist, I guess because he didn't claim to be (the term hadn't yet been in use), but he was not a mercantilist, believed in free markets, and understood that people are motivated by self-interest. He WAS capitalist, as we understand it.
He is quoted as saying the wealth of nations is not in the gold and silver it possesses, but in the goods and services it produces. But I suspect he would have been appalled by the concept of fiat money. The latter is, of course, a coerced medium of exchange, but it is a very poor store of value, especially in the hands of a predatory and corrupt central banking system. Our (the US) current and widening wealth gap (and increasing incidences of poverty) can be placed firmly in the laps of factors 1, 2, and 5 above.
No one would ever consider Biden's social and economic policies as tyrannous, would they, especially given he wants to eliminate cash and move to a government-controlled digital currency?
You make very good points. These ideas need to permeate the zeitgeist narrative. Get on some influential podcasts and discuss this. Please.
I waited 18 months and i burned two of my notebooks, the bullshiter made me to do that.
The problems with both Adam Smith and Carl Marx are with their prescriptions for the implementations of their respective theories. Smith proposed using the invisible hand of greed to rapidly implement Capitalism, while Marx proposed using dictatorship of workers to rapidly implement Communism. In another words, a little-greed, and a little-dictatorship make the medicine go down. What they missed was that a little-greed grows to huge-unending-greed, and that a little-dictatorship grows to huge-unending-dictatorship. Marx fantasized that once his little dictatorship by the good-workers had rapidly implemented his Communism, his little-dictators-by-the-good-working-folks will step down and end the dictatorship, and everybody will live happily ever after. In real life, Marx's little fantasy of dictators voluntarily stepping down has zero chance of happening in real life. By the same token, Smith fantasized that a little greed of the invisible hand can be self correcting (always) towards the general "good" is hardly supported in real life. Smith's self correcting little-greed towards the general good, in real life, too often if not always ends up in huge-greedy-dictatorships. In real life, Smith ends up in huge-dictatorship-by-the-monopolists, while Marx ends up in huge-dictatorship-by-the-greedy. To achive rapid progress, both Smith and Marx end up in fostering huge-greedy-dictatorships. It may appear that in the long run, Smith's huge-dictatorship-by-the-greedy-monopolists is worse, as human greed knows no bounds. Without being controlled by brakes like the 10-Commandments, human greed has no bounds. The unbounded greed let loosed by Smith will likely destroy Earth as we know it, like possibily by runaway man made global warming which has become a real threat to civilization as we know it.
Smith and Marx sound like kissing cousins, 😅, may the invisible hand smack all who take his name in vain!😂