

Das Capitalist (review of new biography of Adam Smith) - gruseom
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/das_capitalist_adam_smith/

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zeteo
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.

~~~
eru
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.

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auxbuss
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...](http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Enlightened-crusade-to-
save-Adam.6696240.jp)

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.

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shiny
"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?

~~~
gruseom
_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?

~~~
eru
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?

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

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

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

~~~
taken11
its wrong though, it would have to be Der Kapitalist to be a pun on it.

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

