The Wealth of Nations (In Our Time)

this is the BBC this podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK thank you for downloading this episode of in our time for more details about in our time and for our Terms of Use please go to BBC co dot uk' slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program hello at the height of the Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century few places in Europe could match the flood of intellectual accomplishment that came from Scotland the philosophy of David Hume and James Hunt's fundamental discoveries about geology are just two examples an Edinburgh and Glasgow boasted the two greatest universities in Europe but the most celebrated figure of the Scottish enlightenment today is Adam Smith the moral philosopher and economist economic theorist who in 1776 published a book that's become the foundation of modern economics it's full title is an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations Smith examines the evolution of human civilization and the ways in which the actions of individuals affected tyre societies the wealth of nations argues passionately against the regulation of markets with me to discuss Adam Smith and the wealth of nations are Richard what more professor of modern history and director of the Institute of intellectual history at the University and Andrews Norman wench emeritus professor of intellectual history at the University of Sussex and Helen Paul make sure in economics and economic history at the university of southampton richard what more could you begin by telling us a bit more about Scotland at the time in the early days of Adam Smith yes well Smith's born in 1723 and you can say that the history of Scotland before that time is both fascinating and also desperate its desperate for lots and lots of reasons you've got to remember that the 17th century is characterized by religious and civil wars so you've got political turmoil you've got battles between Episcopalians and Presbyterians you've got marauding armies you've got problems with the Highlanders you've got antagonism between different governments of Scotland and you've got this big question of economic development because as David Hume famously said in his essay civil liberty something changed at the end of the 17th century when commerce became a reason of state and what that meant is that all states had to become commercial if they wanted to maintain themselves now how they had to do that was by developing Commerce that's a real problem for small states like Scotland and famously the Scots in 1690s attempt to create a commercial empire the darién scheme on the Isthmus of Panama it fails it's a it's it's a bit embarrassing the extent of the failure and then we have the great fact about 18th century Scottish history which is the Union of 1707 when the parliaments of England and Scotland vote to get rid of the Scottish Parliament and to create this new free trade area and the that's just such a remarkable experiment and the big question is how successful was it and that really is a framework for understanding what Smith was doing but to cut to the chase the big answer is that were very successful the big answer is that the usual when big countries took over small countries they colonized them and then subjugated them in this case they seemed to inject Scotland with immense amount of energy which became itself extremely successful as a country there's no question that the Union was a success economically there's a there's a letter of Smith's where he says that the amount of good that the Union did was simply so extensive it couldn't really be nobody could challenge it having said that at the beginning you know the notion of the Union that Scotland's been bought and sold for English gold that it's uncertain what's going to happen and lots of contemporaries were worried that the pull of London especially is going to mean that the Scottish economy actually declines and we're talking about the Scottish enlightenment towards the end of their just that's what we're talking about your way back at the beginning of 18th century very nicely were we talking about the Scottish enlightenment by then you was up and running in a big way what was the what was the economy like in let's say I don't know 70 65 70 onwards yeah actually I think you're wrong because you have to go back to the early period and you can say that that by the time Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations Scotland's thriving actually you've got to remember think 1745 you know Smith's in Oxford but he goes back to Edinburgh you've had Jacobites the Highlanders come down and invade now that is fundamentally important for understanding the wealth of nations because the fact is that we think of commercial societies as very successful and stable but in the 18th century people do not think that they're threatened by wild Republicans by radical Christians are the Wars of Religion going to start again are barbarians going to invade these are these are real questions for Smith they're real questions for Smith and I'll say you are the historian but at the end of the 18th century Scotland was in a very strong position full of great intellectuals great universities industry going strongly I'm just trying to make that as a point before we move on certainly what is room for certainly yeah ok John MacDonald winch would you tell us a bit about Adam Smith's background and his early life well I mean if we go right back to the beginning he's a fatherless child his father dies before he's born he's got his mother as a young widow difficult circumstances some decent provision is made for him possibly by the deceased father he's got a board of guardians there's just a pretty decent team of people who can look after his and the mother's future and and so it he's a sickly child but he manages to thrive in the local Grammar School which is a two-room building in in kakari on the north bank of the the fourth the first of fall's successful or cold cold exporting town does well in does well in that setting and not unusually enters one of the local universities the University of Glasgow rather than Edinburgh in that case at the age of 14 and is taken up by a very good thinker and who becomes his teacher yes you're thinking of front he's not just I am yes he's a new light thinker as lady said it seems love now to ask but he was in fact one of the first of lectures were actually linked to an English lesson and he was a new lighting in all sorts of other respects yes but also Alan Smith clearly acquired quite a grounding in natural philosophy as well as moral philosophy and it was said that natural philosophy and mathematics were interests I was given to understand from what I've read about Smith and previously that he was exceptionally gifted as a scholar is that true or I would put projecting this very scanty evidence but yes it's every sign that you know he's he's a bookie bookish lad he he takes to any opportunity to to read books and it is a good it is a good University I mean just one can compare in several ways as he did later vary with what he saw in Oxford which he's always nothing by comparison it did have quite especially fee for universities in this country each subject he was taught was taught by a professor can you can we talk I'm afraid briefly because we're on the world now yeah but we can't just walk over the is earlier book the Theory of Moral Sentiments can you draw out of that what you think would be significant for whether the conversation about the wealth of nations oh it's a very contested subject because many people who come to Adam Smith via The Wealth of Nations wonder what this book about and the big mistake that everybody makes or many people make is to think of their our Theory of Moral Sentiments or some kind of juvenile exercise early 30s and that the worth of nations is the mature work and somehow but in fact the life isn't like that Adam Smith returns to that book at the very end of his life and decides not to carry out on any of his unfinished projects which he was dedicated to it burns all the notes to it but he spends his time trying to make the Theory of Moral Sentiments as good as he can make it before his death so he it mattered to him at every point in his career from 1750s on to 1780s is it possible if it isn't we'll just move on to wealth of nations to encapsulate what he's trying to say in the theater if it's too difficult too short I mean you can you can take a lead from from several things the first sentence it's a good clue he says there that however selfish we regard people as being and here he's gunning for or or thinking of major moral philosophical systems of Hobbes especially to some extent of man's Vil that are constructed exclusively on a view of the selfishness of human nature now what he wants to show he wants to start there and then to say but actually we know that a very fundamental part of human nature is its capacity to for sympathy and from the capacity that were sympathy for exchanging positions with one another we actually not engaged in selfish activity were engaged in a sociable activity well that's very strong little that's a good platform for moving on but he'll import you want to take that on a bit and then talk about the other major figures influential on Smith's work in his early years but you mean the first 10 or 20 years of his own and this mature intellectual maturity well yeah Smith is thinking about I suppose always has the problem seeing self-interested behavior with altruistic behavior and he's thinking about especially takes ideas from all over the place not just from other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers but from earlier political economist thinkers from French school the physiocrats and he's friends with a lot of people knows a lot of people in the Scottish world because it's really a central belt issue of people going to public lectures and going to clubs and societies and he's able then to suppose bounce ideas off people or hear hear from them and he's sir he's very much embedded in that world and friends with people like David Hume and sets up a club with him called the Select Club and you know he seems to be somebody who has the the sociability to be able to to meet people when he goes to France at one point he meets key French thinkers of the time and he goes all over the place seems to be a bit Zelig like and in this ability to meet all kinds of people when they would imagine these societies which rival and outstripped London at that time in many ways what if they talk to bacon Amish with let's assume they did what what were they talking about what what the schools of thought are in in contention or in in the ring as they were discussing it various I suppose the people who'd be discussing the cutting edge theories would have been aware that there'd been a lot of arguments against something called mercantilism but the general public and maybe some politicians down south might still have had mccandless views and the cantle ism is basically a very old-fashioned system of thinking if I can stockpile a lot of gold and silver in my country block imports and increase outputs exports I will be better off because you think in terms of trade as a zero-sum game you end up with a trade war you end up with friction between states and although these ideas have been attacked by various people throughout the 18th century and even before that they were still quite widely and understood by politicians this notion of trying to encourage exports trying to block imports that was one of the ideas that Smith really didn't like the sound of and was trying to to work out what we would now call free trade arguments can I come back to you Richard what more um he settles down to the wealth of nations and he's been a new European tour for three years and the sunlights had met various people he's also got a private income of three hundred year he doesn't marry he lives with his mother he's devoted to her through her long life and he said was the life of a scholar full-time scholar independent it's got all those it's very much about the universities independent scholar he's been to Oxford for seven years he finds it very dull teachings poor not anything like as good as Edinburgh Glasgow but he reads a lot use the Chancery so there we have him there and he's going to do the world of nations what said some wide is it's a massive enterprise as you use more than he was so what sets him up why does he want to do that book well I think that coming to that this issue of the Enlightenment and you have to remember that the Enlightenment really is a battle it's a battle to work out where are we going really in the broadest sense and again commercial society is not necessarily new they've been lots of commercial societies through history but saying that commerce is the central goal of human activity everyday activity and that governments have to be directly concerned with it that requires a justification and you have to remember that there is a the literature of jeremiad the notion that actually you're on the edge of a precipice but Europe might be reliving the history of Rome and on the edge of a new Dark Age whether it'll be barbarians invading obviously refer to the Highlanders earlier but potentially other shepherd societies invading from the east these are direct concerns now somebody needed to justify commercial society and to deal with this issue of is it at vacation of what was called the selfish system as Donald referred to is commerce something that creates effeminacy it destroys martial virtue or is it something that can be justified and dissociated with certain forms of politeness sociability and morality he thought that commerce was the system now didn't it that was what had happened that was a change that happened towards the end and 17th beginning of the 18th century and he wanted nations to be aware of that and he wanted to examine why it was so what would happen to have mortgaged futures that's that's right I think that the key is that historically you've had lots of forms of Commerce you know going back to Athens the Italian city republics but throughout history they they've not lasted Carthage obviously another famous example they've tended to be defeated by more agrarian societies Rome against Carthage or marauding Shepherds now the fact about Europe is that Commerce has lasted the Roman Empire Falls you've got feudalism established but Commerce has lasted and the question is why is Europe in this peculiar of condition of leading the way as far as commercial societies go and how does the answer that broadly Donald wind well I think that it is right to say that the worth of nations is addressed to this latest most modern form of economic organization called commercial society you need a history of it you need to because in fact it's imperfectly realized even in the countries like England not Scotland over time England that have made most progress reports became being in a commercial society it is the most advanced in one important respect for example agriculture its commercial it has England in the 18th century no longer has a peasantry Scotland and Ireland still do most of Europe has a peasantry so and now one way of just discussing that is to say well that they've retained an aspect of the thing that preceded commercial society let's call it feudalism and so that this tent and the tension between feudal relics as they were now called and the requirements of commercial society is one of the points on smith's agenda of this but he's I mean he as if he said he's good he's going to give you an account of the the nature of wealth I mean what do we mean by its own because we might have as Helena said Jimmy might have these notions of associating wealth with money and the listeners might want to know what you think commercial society means at this stage I can't do much better than just quote the master well the definition of the maus advice of the master is to say commercial societies a society in which every man it becomes in some measure of merchants now what he means by that he doesn't mean that they were all in business or we own small shops he's just saying that it's the kind of society in which you are just not self-sufficient most of your needs have to be met by other people and that engages you in a whole series of transactions of truck and barter and then elaborate use of markets to meet your needs in that sense every man is a merchant excellent Alan for now let's go through these books there are five books in the world have notions book ones concerned with labor and book two with capital can we start with labor we can he's famously given us the idea of the division of labor with his famous example of pin Factory so he discusses how if we can get people to divide labor up between them then they can specialize and then when you specialize you get better at the job you're doing you start finding new ways of doing it just detail the pin the pin well the pin apparently takes about 18 different things to put together so if you want to make a pin you've got to get someone to cut the wire and someone else to twist it someone like the head of the pin and add the head of the pin to the to the base and even someone to put it in the pay / when you finished it and Smith says if you just got one person to do all of that they'd be lucky to make a pin a day you know but if you had a team of people each of whom took on one job you'd now you'd then end up with umpteen pins you know that with huge manufacturing of pins and he said well that's it you know an outlier example but wherever you can subdivide if you can you should do so and then you can specialize they said well because agricultural labor doesn't subdivide quite as neatly it doesn't improve at the pace of of manufactures and you starting to see you know you're going into the industrial revolution period with the factory system appearing so what he's saying if you like draws from but also influences some of the ideas of how to actually rearrange the world of work and then you move sorry just simply on that point it seems important to say that first of all dependent the pin example is pinched it comes from the French encyclopedia it makes no but he doesn't actually tell you that but everybody notices noticed it it's a well-known example and he even says it's a trifling manufacturer who's not saying you know this is world shattering and it's I think he wants to make it a metaphor for something else what's happening in that pin workshop is simply in a nutshell what he's going to happen throughout this commercial society the Occupational subdivision and the multiplication of professions and sub professions and trades and skills and so on I didn't say I think that the pin thing is striking and it gives you this kind of it rivets a minor but for him it does have this extra kind of property of suggesting what's happening in the society at large and which actually drive through society for the next 200 years that's really all still can we talk about capital now look - well he's Smith knew that the physiocrats that he was he admired them and their systemic way of thinking they were the French thinkers who talk thought in terms of a basic economy model they had something called the tableau economic but they believed that value was created only from the land the land sector and therefore and that was quite a common idea that was all value comes from land and that's why society should be based on the landed elite and he's now moving away from that idea to thinking about an interrelated system with land labor and capital as the various factors of production but here's where he makes some of the most striking remarks which people have taken up and said will be about and carried banners for that selfishness is good that people should make themselves rich because this people admire rich people and so on so forth can you just flesh that out a bit yes I mean it sounds awfully like bernhard Mandeville's fable of the bees private vices public virtues but it's if you like a more sanitized version of that because things like that can we develop the idea of selfishness is good getting a lot of money is good that richer to be admired and the poor really do admire the rich when it comes to it he says those things so what can you tell me a bit more about that the idea being that that there is a what we'd call positive externality from that in other words if you have this individual behaving in a self-interested way then they are maybe doing things for their own good but they have some effect on the economy as a whole its social welfare for everybody else I suppose the idea being that he often thinks that systems appear through the interaction between these self-interested individuals developing new things or innovations of various sorts and also what you want to get richer what more well just to say that this notion of self-interest and it's connected to the idea of sympathy that Donald mentioned before because Smith and the person that he was closest to in philosophical terms which is David Hume Hume really creates the environment which Smith then takes forward answering lots of the questions that Hume left unanswered and Hume was famous for arguing that justice is an artificial virtue now the question is if justice is not official virtue you're getting close to Mandeville because you live in a world without morality where there's just delusions a world of delusion and imagination so where does justice come come from and Smith thinks that Hume hasn't done a good enough job in terms of explaining the nature of justice because he thinks that people are selfish but in your selfishness at the same time and and it is selfishness in the sense that you want to increase your own wealth and the remarkable thing is if you focus on that you're going to generate more wealth for everybody else that is the that is the remarkable fact about commercial society it's one of the most wonderful things and the second or equally wonderful is the fact that he thinks a commercial society is creates liberty enables liberty in a way that nothing else does that is that's fundamentally important because there's a debate at the time about really whether you need politics first and then commoners follows or whether commerce comes first and then you get civil liberty now for Smith and for Hume the wonderful thing about commercial society is it generates civil liberty and that is a criticism of lots of Whigs defenders of 1688 6 989 Glorious Revolution who thought that there was something about the mixed Constitution that was somehow generating forms of political and civil at Liberty actually Smith humors saying you can find it in lots of places you can find it in absolute monarchies greed which is devoted to capital accumulation and is absolutely essential because he you can't have the division of labor unless some capital has been accumulated in order to employ ageing able to make that's right and and in fact build them and pay for the machinery is part of the whole process and so on so they do go together but what he says about three-door is not really not that it's greed it is that he relies on one of those eighteenth-century sort of assumptions about dominant passions and he said one person we have is of course just to improve our situation make wealth yes well no no situation why did you talk about being rich then it doesn't mean making no he he means that people will give him the opportunities and for much of human history the opportunities are not existed to do this but people will in fact choose to consume less than they produce and they do why do they consume less than they produce because they want to put something aside to acquire sight I bet something better at some future stage and he relies on that propensity to say it so to speak in book two because he it's got to be it's going to be overcome he thinks the public prodigality that is present in government lots of nods coming from you origin yes I think that's that's absolutely right and obviously it leads us to the third book which is where you have Smith in some ways it is most distinctive because he is profound from our perspective today especially especially thinking about the nature of economics etc he is a profoundly historical writer he thinks that actually in order to be an economist you have to be a historian and the problems that your you face in the present the problems of commercial society the problems of capital accumulation the problems of creating a society where you have sufficient frugality to generate the capital that you need to invest and create a successful commercial society you have to look at why are we in a state where that can happen as it is beginning to happen in England and in Scotland and consequently you have to explain it by reconstructing the history of law and government right across Europe from the fall of the roman Peyer and after which is his very great project which he never finishes but and he actually destroys all the notes which is a shame for this discussion a good about three programs but still Donald wins in look for he to take up what Richard said about that the historical perspective he goes in for comparisons in a massive way now can you again I mean ask a key seem to ask you the the really difficult ones can you extract some marrow from that that we can take before we move on from book for yeah well I mean one simple description of it is he very rarely reflected and gave us clues as to what he was about him you know but he dishes he does say in a very important letter later on he said you know what my it is a very violent attack on on come on the commercial policy of Great Britain and that's where the nub of the attack takes place he hunts the mercantile system the regulator is right right high and low over every manifestation of it that's the rival system and if you like it's the invert inverse of his own what he calls the system of perfect of natural Liberty and perfect liberty and justice so just for to keep it clear by the mercantile system is talking about a very regulated system and so a closed system Helen was referring to it earlier building up your own the ruling system throughout Europe and and of course in that book it's what it contains the one chapter which is up is the most conservative ents it's it's the longest chapter in book for its longest chapter in Lee I'll work it's the chapter on colonies and why is it there it's contains a large historical element about European colonization but there's also something wrong important going on in the background before like 1776 and it is the revolt of the American colonies and Smith delayed for three years and spent them in London which meant that you've been away from cocoa tea where he preferred to be in order to be fully informed about developments on the American front that's all disguised by the fact being such a cool character all he says in the text the present disturbances its massive disturbances and it's very it's absolutely vital for his attack on the mercantile system but he can show you that what's happening in the American case absolutely proves his all the points he wants to make an empire based on mercantile principles is no good for anybody I like this idea of solving the American problem by sending the British Parliament to sit in Philadelphia there you go we haven't got time for that Helen can we talk about the idea of the invisible hand that he brings in it's an intriguing idea he sort of brushes it in but it seems to have a great significance it's well it's very popular now with economists and it's a classic phrase now but what you what it really means I suppose is that you have and the market can can decide without having some kind of government planner so it's really the the opposite of a command economy a planned economy you can let people find ways of trading and then they'll get a good outcome I suppose this is before our understanding of how supply and demand lead to a market price but it's heading towards that that's idea and away from the notion of highly regulated government knows best our models so what precisely is there a precision about this invisible hand Richard well he only uses the term once and in the in the wealth of nations and he's used it in the in the theorem all sentiments obviously to describe the way that the rich are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessities necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal proportions now that's obviously a way of reminding everybody that you should avoid these utopian schemes for societal reconstruction political or economic utopias Smith is is a moderate he's a pragmatist he hates enthusiasm he hates speculators and projector obviously he includes the physiocrats he thinks they're dangerous he thinks these advocates of mercantile Empire's Donald has said are dangerous in consequence and the invisible hand reminds you that there's a natural progress of opulence which is the term for the first chapter in book three the natural progress of opulence the way history would have developed if we really adhered or to the natural passions and they haven't been interfered with I suppose by these projectors and speculators through history Helen can you give us some idea of the suggestion Smith makes about economic policy yes he certainly doesn't like all the the blocks on say the movement of corn through it through the domestic economy it gets very upset about the idea that people have various rules to include our export bounties on the corn trade he says that you know some of these attempts to interfere in the corn trade for instance exacerbate dearth when you have a country that has a small problem it just becomes a large problem when you get this very bad government in the one hunts how fine I mean is he putting forward suggestions that economic policy should not be like that it should be like this oh I see I mean yes the you should have far more of a when I suppose we call a free trade system rather than this landed elite system where things focus on the needs of a special interest group don't you want to take that on well I think that he is warning constantly about the spirit of what it was the spirit of cooperation right and there were these famous remarks that he makes about the immediate businessman I never meet together without they're engaged in some conspiracy to to defraud the public raising prices and by mean he has a very low view of corporate conspiracy and the other and he what he says about business and that must be music to the ears of many person's validates them in philosophy well it depends who they're being compared with yes he they performing a very useful social function there's no doubt about that but be aware of them when they get together and it's a particular problem in the English system because they've got a parliament which is easily subject to special interest pressure and and so the and he describes that as an overgrown standing army of special interests and he wants to issue a very firm warning but babby that is something you should watch out never listen to them but you'd what more can you tell us about the influence of the book say in the 20 years after it was published and then you can we'll start with that yes Smith was never somebody who expected ideas especially ideas about reform to be welcomed and he famously says and it's a it's a it's really an attack on on the physiocrats and utopian schemes like theirs to abolish to create Liberty overnight by legal despotism he thinks that this corrupt world that we live in and he does think it's a corrupt world he thinks it's actually generating an enormous amount of wealth but at the same time he really wants to attack the mercantile system but at the same time he's obsessed with unintended consequences you can't expect well you can always expect the unexpected now that's absolutely the history of the reception of the wealth of nations because the attack on the mercantile system is taken up by people who think that Smith is the arch opponent of aristocracy and that this ntact attack on primogeniture and n tale for example at night on the street of Tom Perry says Thomas Paine loves loved up again book three book four they're really they provide ballast and they interpret Smith as a radical who's justifying their schemes for again abolishing aristocracy which is the basic idea of the French Revolution on the other hand the great conservative thinker Burke might as well well again that's they they they knew each other which is is obviously yeah okay so they say and Burke again claimed that Smith for example was on his side in the condemnation of Warren Hastings and again part of the took up the idea so the idea is going down two tracks at that station bunch of the radicals painting it up and Burke at others say can we develop how the influence went into policy is that possible well I mean we mentioned I mean certainly there if you like all the things that went into the 19th century free trade movement had made England the first free trading nation in a sense they were congratulating themselves on the santino in the world salacious about having achieved something that he being a bit of a pessimist thought would never be established because of the power of special interests but there so there's that whole range of economic reform in a way of removing the restrictions and monopolies and privileges and those kinds of things that cross a wide front but I mean I think that if we're interested in other areas of policy some of the things that are a bit surprising I mean it let me at random yeah disestablished the Church of England not a popular subject and hasn't happened require militia training for all members of society anybody who occupies a professional position in a middle class I think should be subject to a public examination again but why because in fact it is against a world which is dominated by by patronage patronage by waitress Paul Smith himself for that to live but instead of patronage we should do it by merit again something took a long time and you think he's arrived but if you can you if you have it wasn't a nice entry you had actually entrance since the civil service by examination but you imagine in the 18th century saying them every lawyer every doctor and every person is that you literally had to be go through a public examination not a popular idea what I would what are the things because we need at the end of the program Helen I'm a shorthand of many people post myth is that he was the architect of a modern free-market economics would you say that's would you go along with her not quite I think people see him they can see what they want in him that's and that's one of the issues but I suppose his notion of a system an interrelated system that is not subject to weird regulations that is something that he popularized and so in shorthand he's viewed as this free trade thinker but I think if you you know he there were limits to it I mean he for instance wanted the shipping industry to be protected because of defense reasons he wasn't completely you know one of these people at the extreme end of the free trade scale roger corman um just to say that the other thing that we need to remember is that he writes so beautifully there's lots of jokes in the world of nations he doesn't do the things that you expect him to do but also we have to remember that he burned those papers he didn't finish the big project and the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the wealth of nations are both part of this philosophical history of law and government which was the aim was to make laws rule not men and that great aspiration of Hume and of Smith it didn't he didn't manage it well thank you very much for taking on so much in in the time allotted thank you to Helen for Richard what not I'm Donald winch and next week we'll be talking about the history of UNIX thank you for listening and the in our time podcasts gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests do you want to say what you liked up said no I'm just along with looking looking for solutions to a problem with many other people in a society in which the division of labor is very fine everybody might be defined by a very narrow range of tasks and since we are what we do if there's a danger that in fact we become stunted human beings so he's looking for remedies for that and obviously education and antha and the militia but the other thing is you need outlook on life needs they need to have a bit of satire directive against him they needs and music and dancing and if it's necessary the public ought to support those activities yes why didn't we get that in the program no I mean that's the it's he's so rich and and so many I mean that the attack on on the oxford professors who were so slow I've looked over dozen because because again he thinks that because they have a salary I mean I think the option at the moment absolutely wonderful just ok that's fine but then but in those days and Smith partly because it he was he was at Bailey and it was accused of being high church and and Jacobite as well so and and anteed very much against hedges got fancy scott so he has a he has a tough time they find him they the claim no deals of its throughs they find him reading Humes treatise on human understanding which again is anti religious of course but he says that because they're salaried it means that they really are idle the professors in Oxford because there's no incentive to do a really good job complete contrast in in Glasgow where you are paid by you students you know they're going to turn up to your lectures and they'll they'll they'll pay for them they can take care of this line of argument that's businessmen there's no special thing about businessman Alex for Dons show very clearly the spirit of cooperation if you're bit if the corporation employs you and regardless of what you do then of course you'll build community and I think it's the nature of corporations yes and that's why he says again that governments shouldn't listen to organised merchants because that's it's just it's you're not going to come out with sensible policies for the public good and that is the that is obviously the aspiration I mean again there's a lovely idea of you have to follow what he calls the wisdom of Solon which is you kilometer but you can't make perfect laws for a perfect world so you make laws for the second best and and that again is is what you need to aspire to in and obviously a sense of it not being a perfect world and therefore you have to address that issue directly it's that's why again I mean reading reading it's it's it's worth reading so much of Smith I mean it's difficult for us but it is it's wonderful stuff there are many more radio for arts and discussion programs to download for free find these on the website at BBC coat UK radio for

Channel: BBC Podcasts

Views: 4,842

Rating: 4.8095236 out of 5

Keywords: economics, business, adam smith, labor, market, money, classical economics, theory, free, audiobook, the wealth of nations, wealth, trade, finance, technology, education, math, fashion, drink, fitness, beauty, athletics, media studies (field of study), broadcasting (industry), crafts, engineering, language, philospher, humanities, computer, communications, health, must watch, visual, media, performing, social, info, must, read description

Id: 4Waqi8_no-0

Length: 46min 14sec (2774 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018