Speaking of Smith Archives

Adam Smith on Infrastructure

October 13, 2021

Is keeping up with other advanced economies a sufficient justification for increased national spending on infrastructure?

Adam Smith dared to answer, “No.”

The Hume-Rousseau Affair

October 12, 2021

When David Hume learned in 1762 that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was interested in relocating to Britain, he got busy to make that happen...Within a few months, things turned very sour.

Unexpected Insights of David Hume

October 11, 2021

His ideas were like those of his younger friend Adam Smith, but Hume did not write a huge and influential book such as Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776). Nevertheless, it should not be overlooked that his economic ideas were put in print long before Smith’s.

Smith on Sympathy and the Loss of Reason

October 6, 2021

For Smith, sympathy is a multidimensional phenomenon that also can take us inside ourselves as we reflect on our place in the world, generating feelings and passions that can be illuminating or disturbing.

Adam Smith and Default Rules for Deceased Organ Donation

October 4, 2021

How should we understand the will of deceased organ donors, and what would the impartial spectator have to say about obtaining said consent?

Mandeville’s Social Toyman and Social Media

September 29, 2021

...where Smith invites his reader to reflect sympathetically on their own personal interactions with shop-keepers, Mandeville invokes ugly stereotypes of both the indulgent 1% and of greedy shopkeepers who are simultaneously crafty and uneducated.

Colonial Beer with Molasses (and Cookies!)

September 28, 2021

"... it’s no surprise that Smith wasn’t too impressed with some of the improvisations the Americans made when it came to the classics, especially when it came to molasses."

Adam Smith and the European Union

September 27, 2021

The EU was built on the very same idea that the free movement of labor is beneficial for both producers and workers... It was Adam Smith, who first brought forward this idea that accumulation of stock leads to it being employed in production, which in turn requires a certain number of workmen.

Learning at AdamSmithWorks

September 21, 2021

How you can use AdamSmithWorks as a resource in your own self-education and personal and intellectual development.

Sympathy, Fellow-Feeling, and the Imagination

September 12, 2021

Smith’s notion of sympathy goes beyond simply expanding the repertoire of our shared fellow-feelings to a major rethinking about how we experience ourselves and our relationship to others through the imagination.

Rose Wilder Lane and the American Libertarian Movement

September 7, 2021

In Part II of her review of Caroline Fraser's Prairie Fires, Alice Temnick explores the life and personality of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of the author of the Little House on the Prairie books.

Blushing and the Sympathetic Imagination in Adam Smith

September 2, 2021

Why do people blush? Harpham argues that, according to Smith, people blush because they perceive behavior, actions, expressions, or words of others as impudent or rude. Read more to learn what this says about the "sympathetic imagination."