Das Capitalist (review of new biography of Adam Smith) | Hacker News Reader

Das Capitalist (review of new biography of Adam Smith)

amconmag.com

27 pointsgruseom13 comments

After hearing so much about it for years, I've recently made time and read The Wealth of Nations. It's full of amazing insights that are still valid three centuries later. Thoughtful arguments in favor of free markets are balanced with lucid exposure of capitalism's limitations and inefficiencies. Overall, a thoroughly anti-dogmatic read, and a big improvement over 99% of subsequent economic writings.

If you can read German, I suggest perusing Silvio Gesell's "Die natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung". The author belongs to the rare-breed of free-market socialists, and has some interesting ideas about money and land.

I'll be reading. Smith was a great mind and his writing holds up.

Apropos of nothing, I used to live across the street from his old house in Lochend Close, Edinburgh http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Enlightened-crusade-to-sav...

I also used to pop up the road, The Royal Mile, to stretch my legs and have a sandwich near his grave in the Canongate kirk.

Read along with Hume and find out that the 1700s aren't ancient history. Heck, read Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (written during the English Civil War. Yes, we had one) and discover the 1600s.

"But Smith was wrong. Every successful economy, without exception, has prospered by subsidizing key industries and protecting them from foreign competition. And nearly without exception, every developed society has then, with consummate hypocrisy, preached free trade to less-developed countries."

Comeon, really? That no country has practiced complete free-trade means Smith was wrong about free-trade?

That no country has practiced complete free-trade means Smith was wrong about free-trade?

Scialabba is saying Smith was wrong to argue that protectionism would never be a net economic benefit because richer countries have in fact been more protectionist than poorer ones. Admittedly this doesn't follow strictly logically, but that's a technical point. More interesting is whether the claim about rich vs. poor countries is true. If it is, it's significant. Has anyone here read Ha-Joon Chang?

As a counter-anecdote: India only started getting rich, when they dropped the protectionism somewhat.

Perhaps rich countries can get away with more protectionism than poorer ones, and they are rich despite it, not because?

It is strange that a book about the great Scottish economist should have a faux-German title.

it's a pun on Marx's book title, Das Kapital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital

I'm aware of the pun. I consider it a bad one.

its wrong though, it would have to be Der Kapitalist to be a pun on it.

Yes. So it's even more funny. It allows us to laugh about those mono-lingual English speakers.

The book is Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. You're referring to the review's title. It's customary for editors to give witty titles to reviews. But can we please talk about the content instead?

Funny how those who pointed out that the pun is a bad one and gramatically wrong received downvotes...

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