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Adam Smith's Lost Legacy

  • An Excellent Review of The Failings of Neo-classical Economics

    In Reality Base Blog (HERE)a book review by John Gray in the London Review of Books, is reported (25 November):

    “Animal spirits and what else is wrong with neoclassical economics”

    “A much discussed book this year has been Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, [...]
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    Posted: November 26, 2009, 9:18am EST

  • Time Travel to the Heady 1960s

    I attended a meeting addressed by Robert Skidelski last evening (6.00pm - 7.15pm – left before last questions). He is a very clear speaker and fluent in Keynes and ‘Keynesian’ macro-economics – so much so it was like sitting in a graduate economics class in the late-60s.

    His analysis [...]
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    Posted: November 25, 2009, 12:11pm EST

  • Adam Smith Quotations

    Jonathan Schwarz writes in “A Tiny Revolution” (HERE)

    “Once Again Adam Smith Betrays the Principles of Adam Smith”

    “Several finance professionals just co-wrote a column for the New York Times saying this:

    American workers are overpaid, relative to equally productive employees elsewhere doing the same work. [...]
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    Posted: November 21, 2009, 7:01am EST

  • Markets and Panglossian Invisible Hands

    Scott Cooney, author of Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill) writes a slanted piece in Triple Pundit (‘people, planet, profit’) HERE: “Paul Hawken on the State of the Markets”:

    “To those that argue the efficient market hypothesis, based on Adam Smith’s theory [...]
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    Posted: November 21, 2009, 4:31am EST

  • Announcement V

    Five Topics

    1 First of three moves today (Move 1): Transferring basics and temporary office to my daughter's today and tomorrow (may work on-line between old home and my daughter's for a week or two). Hence, very busy with 1st move boxes and some furniture.

    2 From the [...]
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    Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:51am EST

  • Adam Smith on "Ruin of a Nation"

    Ben Stein writes on “Four lessons from the recession” in (19 November) in Fortune HERE which includes this observation:

    “And another little note ... my much-missed father used to tell me with great approval Adam Smith's famous quote regarding prophecies of doom for America, "there is a lot" [...]
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    Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:34pm EST

  • The Very Best Short Summary of Adam Smith's Life and Work (Longish Post)

    Chris Berry, Professor of Political Theory at University of Glasgow is a leading expert on the life and work of one of the University of Glasgow's most famous academics, Adam Smith.

    He has created a 10 minute talk (HERE), published by the University of Glasgow, that describes [...]
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    Posted: November 17, 2009, 12:36pm EST

  • Adam Smith on Government Roles

    By Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala writing (22 November) in Organiser (HERE):

    “Economy Watch - In defence of regulation of markets”

    “This veneration of free markets was first propounded by famous economist Adam Smith about 200 years ago. He said that competition in a free market establishes public [...]
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    Posted: November 16, 2009, 9:34am EST

  • Adam Smith On Education and the Division of Labour

    Michael Robbins writes in digital emunction (“I refer to largesse in thought HERE:

    “Best books of the year. A mug, a game. Benjamin Schwarz predictably plumps for biographies & Alice Munro, while Amazon readers appear to be, in Adam Smith’s words, “as stupid and ignorant as it [...]
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    Posted: November 15, 2009, 5:23am EST

  • Self-Interest is Not Selfishness

    In a post I made on 10 November (see below), Greg Baldwin posted a comment. I would normally just reply to the comment. However, I consider the exchange of wider interest and importance, and to avert it being missed by those who do not search for the rare comments Lost [...]
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    Posted: November 13, 2009, 4:36am EST

  • Announcement IV

    I took a short break yesterday either side of lunch and posted on Lost Legacy.

    However, the spam comments attack continues - 17 since Saturday - all in Chinese and the bits in English are weird.

    Those few appropriate comments were published - the rest were rejected.

    [...]
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    Posted: November 11, 2009, 4:39am EST

  • Eulogy To The Rational Expectations Hypothesis

    Dr Madsen Pirie writes in the Adam Smith Institute Blog (10 November) HERE: a trenchant expose of the failings of the rational expectations hypothesis:

    “One of the few good things to come out of the financial crisis is a re-examination of the fundamentals of Austrian Economics. One [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 6:15am EST

  • Smith on Banking Regulation

    Dr Hugh Goodacre, a teaching fellow at University College London, writes to the Financial Times (10 November) HERE on the subject of the “arbiter’s” role of the ‘invisible hand’ as presented earlier by Michael Rossman, who “praised” the “invisible hand” as “the arbiter of success and failure”.

    [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 6:01am EST

  • Selfishness is No Virtue

    Greg Baldwin, President of VolunteerMatch, writes HERE:

    “The Case Foundation: Why Don't People Want To Give?”

    “From The Case Foundation”:

    “Well, the easy answer is that it's hard to make people give because people don't really want to. The logic is simple and compelling. People don't [...]
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    Posted: November 10, 2009, 3:51am EST

  • On Searching Through Cupboards, Undisturbed Since 1998

    The sort out of my library of books continues.

    This morning I began on some cupboards in the garage, shut since 1998, when we moved here and I came across some ‘lost’, though not forgotten, books on economic thought, many of which I have kept since the 70s, [...]
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    Posted: November 09, 2009, 10:08am EST

  • Announcement 3

    I have a couple of pressing projects on the go:

    1 Daniel Klein and Brandon Lucas's "In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle" (October 2009), which is their most interesting paper on the significance of the "metaphor" of the "invisible hand" for Adam Smith (from an idea' [...]
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    Posted: November 03, 2009, 3:28pm EST

  • "Centrality" Exchanges in an Invisible Hand Debate

    Brad Delong has composed a selection of pieces on Adam Smith and the invisible hand controversy (including some interesting comments), of which Lost Legacy has contributed its two-pence worth these past 4 years (and health permitting and other circumstances, I shall continue to do so for the foreseeable near future).
    [...]
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    Posted: November 02, 2009, 5:27pm EST

  • The "Secret" of "Winning" Investment Advice?

    Ersun Warnke writes on “Investing for Value” in Salem-News.com HERE:

    “The History of Value in Economics”

    "Adam Smith is a well recognized figure in the economics world. Most people in our society, and especially in the business community, have probably heard his name in connection with" [...]
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    Posted: November 01, 2009, 5:57am EST

  • A Lost Legacy Open Book Discussion (II).

    After Adam Smith: a century of transformation in politics and political economy, 2009, Murray Milgate and Shannon C. Stimson, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

    There is no doubt that the popular (and academic) portrayal of the lifetime-works of Adam Smith is quite at odds with the actual [...]
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    Posted: October 31, 2009, 6:53am EDT

  • A New Slant on Adam Smith's Use of the Invisible Hand Metaphor

    A New Slant on Adam Smith: must be read HERE

    “In a Word or Two, Placed in the Middle: The Invisible Hand in Smith’s Tomes
    by Daniel B. Klein and Brandon Lucas"

    "Abstract: The meaning and significance of Smith’s expression “led by an invisible hand” has been [...]
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    Posted: October 30, 2009, 12:59pm EDT

  • The Incorporated Towns Were Bad, but the East India Company Was Worse

    Sam Smith, who covered Washington during all or part of one quarter of America's presidencies and edited alternative journals since 1964 edits
    UNDERNEWS (‘the online report of the Progressive Review’) (30 October) HERE:

    “RECOVERED HISTORY: MEET THE REAL ADAM SMITH”

    “…Adam Smith is routinely and thoughtlessly' [...]
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    Posted: October 30, 2009, 12:06pm EDT

  • Almost Right But Not Quite

    Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell writes on “Economics and Religion” HERE:

    “A word about the ancient god of the free market system, Adam Smith. When Smith is quoted regarding the "invisible hand" of the market, what is conveniently forgotten is his assumptions about the conditions necessary to make free [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 5:15pm EDT

  • The Significance of Property - Again

    Bruce Web is in debate with me HERE: and we both are stuck in conceptual confusion about the meaning of property – is it purely a legal term, distinguished by its codification by jurists and authors, or was it a quite unintended development by unknown people in the very [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 12:56pm EDT

  • Unfair to Adam Smith: his philosophy accords with modern psychology

    I return to another article in Psychology Today (HERE), this time written by Darcia Narvaez, Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Collaborative for Ethical Education at the University of Notre Dame:

    “Moral Landscapes Living the life that is good for one to live: The Cultural Airspace [...]
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    Posted: October 29, 2009, 7:08am EDT

  • When Wealth Isn't Wealth

    Andy Absher writes in the Herald Bulletin online HERE

    “Businesses compete because they must Discouraging risk-taking is a red herring”

    “When you read Nancy Turner’s viewpoint, you would think the name of Adam Smith’s book was, “The Wealth of the Wealthy”. Though Smith makes many [...]
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    Posted: October 27, 2009, 10:18am EDT

  • A Little Mystery To Be Solved

    Ben Hyde writes in “Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm” Blog (HERE) in:

    “The Perverse and Invisible Hand”

    ““I have recently started reading Albert Hirschman’s 1991 book “The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.” I’m only 20 pages into it so no telling where [...]
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    Posted: October 27, 2009, 7:09am EDT

  • October Lost Legacy Prize Won by Kieran O'Hara - also a nominee for the 2009 Annual Prize

    Kieron O'Hara, UK Centre for Policy Studies writes (25th October) in Gov Monitor HERE:

    “Capitalism And The Decline In Trust Of Our Markets”

    “Smith has not been well-served by commentators whether admiring or hostile. He was neither the apostle of ‘greed is good’, nor the evangelist' [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 12:22pm EDT

  • Excellent Writing But Still Mythical

    Atanu Dey writes a highly readable and lively piece on “Why education matters” HERE

    “I am sure that there is no secret cabal of powerful people with evil glints in their eyes plotting to keep Indians illiterate. But individual behavior motivated by private incentives - micro behavior - [...]
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    Posted: October 25, 2009, 9:05am EDT

  • Tenuous Links Do Not a Theory Make

    Bill Bonner writes in Running Because I Cant Fly Blog HERE:

    "Macro for Dummies"

    “Later, economists of the Scottish enlightenment, notably Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson elaborated. Smith, like Harding, saw the economy ordered by the invisible hand of God. Ferguson saw markets as a ‘spontaneous order,’ [...]
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    Posted: October 24, 2009, 10:35am EDT

  • A Claim Too Far

    Terry Arthur posts on the Adam Smith Institute Blog HERE:

    The “invisible hand”, in its modern guise, has been given many invented roles by modern economists since the 1950s, all wrongly attributed to Adam Smith’s single use of the popular, 18th-century metaphor in Book IV of [...]
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    Posted: October 24, 2009, 9:15am EDT

  • A Psychologist Invites Modern Economists to His Couch

    Jim Taylor, Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today HERE:

    “Economics: Economists are Irrational!”

    What are free-market economists thinking?

    “I recently read an article by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in which he described the renewed battle between so-called freshwater economists (so named because [...]
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    Posted: October 23, 2009, 5:18am EDT

  • An Unbridled Error

    Stephen Fleischman, writer-producer-director of documentaries (see www.amahchewahwah.com, e-mail stevefl@ca.rr.com), writes in the
    The Smirking Chimp HERE:

    “Hypocrisy Unbridled”

    “Going back to Adam Smith, the concept that the "invisible hand" of the free market would keep the capitalist economy in balance has been the conventional wisdom. Capitalism [...]
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    Posted: October 22, 2009, 4:00am EDT

  • An Infamous Misquote

    “Hank” writes in Own The Dollar (“Don’t Let the Dollar Own You”) HERE:

    “Famous Quotes About Money And Investing From Adam Smith The Father of Capitalism » Stock Quotes Online”

    “Who Is Adam Smith? Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” which is considered the first [...]
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    Posted: October 22, 2009, 2:24am EDT

  • Long Post - Magna Carta's Significance

    Bruce has posted the following on his Blog (HERE)and I have commented below too.

    Bruce's Post:

    "Magna Carta: What it is and what it isn't"

    I would think most educated people in the Anglo-American tradition and in those countries who either had English Common Law' [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 4:51pm EDT

  • Announcement

    Somebody sent two comments for Lost Legacy today and I passed them for publication but they seem to have 'disappeared'!

    I did not make a note of them but they referred to their enjoyment of Lost Legacy (thank you very much) and commented on somebody whose ideas were the [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 12:18pm EDT

  • Another Great Smithian Metaphor

    Peter Boettke writes in The Austrian Economists (HERE):

    “Is Adam Smith's discussion of governmental "juggling trick" relevant to our policy discourse today?

    Scott has already talked about this at The Economic Way of Thinking, but we should dig a bit deeper into the discussion from Smith's Wealth [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 12:03pm EDT

  • Where a Little Knowledge can be Misleading

    Paul F. Hosman resides in Kalamazoo and writes for “Read & React” in the Kalamazoo Gazzete ("A blog to create conversation between the Kalamazoo Gazette and its readers) (HERE):

    “Intelligence, beauty and skill favor select segments of society over the welfare of all people”

    “Maybe we" [...]
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    Posted: October 21, 2009, 2:36am EDT

  • From a Multitude of Epigones

    Tom Slater writes (19 October) in GreenBeat (HERE)

    “Cap and Trade 101: For those who haven’t been following for the last 30 years”

    “This approach to regulation applies ye olde economist Adam Smith’s theory of the “invisible hand” (the power of the free market, essentially) [...]
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    Posted: October 20, 2009, 5:15am EDT

  • From the Invention of Property (collective and individual) All Else Followed

    Readers will recall that I had an exchange with Bruce on Bruce Web last week (HERE): Here

    This is my initial response to where we diverge - the historial significance of the invention of property - if we cannot agree on that issue, I do not see [...]
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    Posted: October 19, 2009, 10:56am EDT

  • Another Myth Circulates

    Subir Gokarn (19 October) in Business Standard HERE http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/subir-gokarnvalueorganisation/373592/
    writes on Oliver Williamson's work and its “great relevance for many contemporary Indian issues”

    “Adam Smith is best known for his characterisation of the market economy as an “invisible hand”. Buyers and sellers, each acting in their own interest, lead [...]
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    Posted: October 19, 2009, 6:44am EDT

  • Smith on Government Roles

    Attorney Jonathan Emord writes(19 October) in News With Views HERE:

    “OVERNIGHT SOLUTION TO THE NATION'S ECONOMIC WOES”

    “There is an alternative to this highly paternalistic and historically failed approach to problem solving. It is the alternative view, understood to be a moral imperative by the primary' [...]
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    Posted: October 19, 2009, 5:45am EDT

  • Announcement - temporary no connection from 11am UK time

    I am travelling back to Edinburgh from France today (Saturday) and will reconnect, all being well, later this evening.

    It looks like an interesting debate is commencing between myself and Bruce on the geo-historical formation and evolution of property (see my post on the ideas of Bruce for Thursday [...]
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    Posted: October 17, 2009, 1:44am EDT

  • An Early Non-Believer in the Invisible Hand

    Thirty-two years ago I reviewed a book for the Times Higher Education Supplement by John Cornwall, 1977, Modern Capitalism: its growth and transformation (Martin Robertson).

    It is among my library in France and I looked it up yesterday. In its preface I found this reference to the invisible hand:
    [...]
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    Posted: October 16, 2009, 9:23am EDT

  • Spare Us From the Invisible Hand

    Patrick Kilbride writes in Chamber Post HERE:

    “Free People, Free Minds, Free Markets”

    ‘In the 18th-century, Adam Smith left us with the indelible image of markets producing desirable social outcomes through the work of an "invisible hand." ’

    Comment
    In an otherwise neat argument for [...]
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    Posted: October 16, 2009, 6:18am EDT

  • A Smithian View of History

    Bruce (11 October ) at the Bruce Web – history, politics, myth HERE [Please follow the link as our debate is "parallel" rather than direct (I am not sure exactly what Bruce is debating with me, so I have offered an alternative perspective of history, which I think I [...]
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    Posted: October 15, 2009, 2:17pm EDT

  • Jay Richards on Selfishness

    Jay W. Richards, author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and not the Problem (2009), (15 October) writes in The American (the journal of the American Enterprise Institute) HERE:

    "Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism"

    “The Virtue of Selfishness?

    You [...]
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    Posted: October 15, 2009, 9:29am EDT

  • Elinor Ostrom - An End to Homo Economicus?

    Mario Rizzo writes (13 Oct) in Wall Street Pit HERE and Here:

    “Elinor Ostrom and the Relevance of Economics”

    “In fact, I would venture the guess than most economists had not heard of her before the prize was announced yesterday morning.

    Two reasons for this [...]
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    Posted: October 14, 2009, 2:17am EDT

  • Identify the Invisible Hand!

    Alex Tabarrok writes on the Nobel Prize for Oliver Williamson in an article on the Marginal Revolution Blog HERE “Oliver Williamson and the pin factory”, which is fine but it contains the following paragraph:

    “Transaction cost economics is all about applying these ideas in different settings to figure [...]
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    Posted: October 13, 2009, 6:09am EDT

  • A Small Step for Cubans?

    The other evening, watching television, an item on the news caught my attention. Apparently, a group of Cuban farmers had been given permission from the Raul Castro government to produce lettuces for private.

    This permission seemed to have shown early results, mainly in the form of more lettuces [...]
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    Posted: October 12, 2009, 10:26am EDT

  • An Hour in the Life Of a Humble Journeyman

    I have a copy of Hector C. Macpherson’s (1899) "Adam Smith", Famous Scots Series, Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier, Edinburgh, in my library in France, which I had cause to look up shortly after I arrived at for a week. I acquired my copy in a second-hand bookshop in Edinburgh in [...]
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    Posted: October 11, 2009, 9:01am EDT

  • Announcement - connected

    Connected 09.45pm French time.

    Shall post Sunday.

    Gavin [...]
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    Posted: October 10, 2009, 3:42pm EDT

  • Announcement: Connection Interrupted

    I shall of off-line until I re-establish connection in France.

    This short break is to arrange the property for the winter.

    Always mindful that Adam Smith visited France (Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Paris) 1764-66, I also have parts of my library there.

    I hope to re-connect later today.
    [...]
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    Posted: October 10, 2009, 1:10am EDT

  • Comments Moderation Stays ON

    A series of attacks on Lost Legacy from foreign repetitive language trolls and mischief-makers forced me to introduce the Blogger feature of Comments Moderation.

    These have continued intermittently since (the latest, a couple of hours ago). I am therefore compelled to leave Comment Moderation on.

    Apologies.

    As [...]
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    Posted: October 09, 2009, 11:03am EDT

  • The Invention of Homo Economicus

    Terence Netto writes on "Anwar Ibrahim at Berkeley in Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger: Remove Authorianism and Dictatorship" (8 October) HERE

    "Anwar’s Bridging Ability

    Anwar’s penchant for synthesizing thought from Islamic and western streams recently drew attention from an unlikely quarter. Sholto Byrnes, assistant editor of" [...]
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    Posted: October 08, 2009, 10:48am EDT

  • Excellent Questions on Adam Smith's Thinking

    Scott Beaulier reports on The Economic Way of Thinking HERE

    “A Night of Enlightenment”

    “Jim Otteson's talk here at Mercer last week was titled "The Scottish Enlightenment on the Promise and Peril of Commercial Society." Jim gave us a wonderful overview of the Enlightenment (with particular emphasis [...]
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    Posted: October 07, 2009, 11:26am EDT

  • On Smith’s Approach to Corporate Governance

    [This is a long post because it requires a proper presentation of some of the evidence.]

    At the History of Economics Society annual meeting in the University of Colorado, Denver this year, I attended one of the sessions at which there was a small eruption of differences between [...]
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    Posted: October 07, 2009, 7:39am EDT

  • Edmund Conway’s Case "Not Proven" (as in the Scottish Verdict)

    Edmund Conway’s "50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know" published by Quercus at £9.99, arrived yesterday and, as promised in Lost Legacy (29 September), I said I would comment on whether it justified my apprehensions, or not, by simply repeating the claims of modern economists that Adam Smith, allegedly [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 10:52am EDT

  • Paul Samuelson's Nuanced Assessment of the Invisible-Hand Doctrine

    Following yesterday’s post on Paul Samuelson’s 1948 introduction of the alleged “theory” of Adam Smith about the “invisible hand”, I thought I should bring the debate a bit closer than 62 years ago (as a correspondent, Garry, suggests via email).

    Turning to my draft text, I shall quote from [...]
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    Posted: October 06, 2009, 5:24am EDT

  • A Research Agenda

    “Even Adam Smith, the canny Scot whose monumental book, ‘The Wealth Of Nations’(1776), represents the beginning of modern economics or political economy – even he was so thrilled by the recognition of an order in the economic system that he proclaimed the mystical principle of ‘the invisible hand’: that each [...]
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    Posted: October 05, 2009, 5:02pm EDT

  • Smith and the Prisoner's Dilemma

    John Cassidy writes on: “Rational Irrationality: The Real Reason That Capitalism Is So Crash-Prone” in The New Yorker (5 October). Normxxx comments, parenthetically, on Cassidy’s thoughts in normxxx ruminates... HERE
    [[comments in double-square brackets are normxxx’s]]

    “Because financial markets consist of individuals who react to what others are [...]
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    Posted: October 04, 2009, 2:49pm EDT

  • The Policy Rot Rooted in Modern Economics

    John Cassidy writes on: “Rational Irrationality: The Real Reason That Capitalism Is So Crash-Prone” in The New Yorker (5 October). Normxxx comments, parenthetically, on Cassidy’s thoughts in normxxx ruminates...
    HERE

    NB: [[comments in double-square brackets are normxxx’s]]

    “Because financial markets consist of individuals who react to [...]
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    Posted: October 04, 2009, 7:17am EDT

  • A Good Book Ruined by Misunderstanding Adam Smith

    Richard Bronk, 1998, Progress and the Invisible Hand, London, Little, Brown and Company:

    “For the ‘invisible hand’ of the market is seen to lead to the most efficient satisfaction of the wants of different market participants, and in this sense to maximise the social good, merely by harnessing the [...]
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    Posted: October 03, 2009, 7:13am EDT

  • Diary Announcement

    I am visiting Aberdeen University Friday for a seminar on Scottish intellectual history under the auspices of the Scottish Philosophy Group, which covers academics from Glasgow, Edinburgh,St Andrews and Aberdeen universities, plus retired persons like me.

    Leaving Edinburgh and 8.29 and returning about 12 hours later, so posts will [...]
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    Posted: October 01, 2009, 7:14pm EDT

  • Good Teachers Should Refrain from Teaching the Modern Version of the Invisible Hand in Smith's Name

    “My First Day of Class” by David Henderson in The Library of Economics and Liberty HERE

    “When I give them my phone number so they can reach me (it ends with 1776), I ask them the significance. Invariably someone answers that it was the pub date of Adam [...]
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    Posted: September 30, 2009, 6:28am EDT

  • Start With a Myth, End Without an Answer

    Mike Farmer writes on “Analogies to America's 2009 recession” (28 September), on Bonzai (a Libertarian Blog) HERE:

    “The 1929 crash exposed in addition the naviety [sic] and ignorance of bankers, businessmen, Wall Street experts and academic economists high and low; it showed they did not understand [...]
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    Posted: September 29, 2009, 4:41am EDT

  • Is Edmund Conway Innocent?

    Edmund Conway’s "50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know" published by Quercus at £9.99,is "well timed".

    "Each of the topics – from Adam Smith’s invisible hand through to the more modern “happynomics” – follows the same four-page template, with bite-sized sections, timelines and key quotations pulled out.[...]
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    Posted: September 29, 2009, 2:58am EDT

  • Adam Smith and Religous Beliefs

    Rev. Allen M Baker, Pastor of Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, writes in Banner of Truth HERE

    “Which will you choose?”

    “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread (Genesis 3:19)”

    In 1776 Adam Smith, a Scottish economist and Deist, a [...]
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    Posted: September 28, 2009, 4:20pm EDT

  • Government Failure Also Endemic

    Kevin Williamson writes in National Review Online, “Taming ‘Animal Spirits”
    (‘Investors sometimes behave irrationally, and so do regulators’)
    HERE:

    “Animal spirits are indeed at play, and mischievously so, both in the marketplace and among those who seek to govern the marketplace. It is characteristic of our academic caste [...]
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    Posted: September 28, 2009, 3:17pm EDT

  • Adam Smith No Ideologue

    Baron Bodissey writes long articles in the “Gates of Vienna” (HERE)and is connected (how, is not clear) to The Fjordman Files HERE the themes of which are too complex, long and not related much to Lost Legacy’s focus on Adam Smith.

    “The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, professor [...]
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    Posted: September 27, 2009, 7:09am EDT

  • A (Bright) Students' Choice

    Nick Kraft quotes in his article “Misleading Indicators” from David Colander’s book, The Making of an Economist, Redux and asks:

    “How do people become economists?” (HERE)

    “Were an undergraduate student to ask an economist how to become an economist, he would tell her to go [...]
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    Posted: September 26, 2009, 8:38am EDT

  • Smithian Competition Confirmed

    Laura Fitzpatrick asks: “Are Humans Actually Selfish?” in
    TIME (HERE)

    “In his new book The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, primatologist Frans de Waal uses a variety of studies on empathy in animals to debunk the idea that humans are competitive to the [...]
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    Posted: September 25, 2009, 1:22pm EDT

  • Comment Moderation ON

    I have been forced to activate 'Comment Moderation'. Apologies.

    Lost Legacy has operated without it so far, but senseless posts have become a regular feature, which is disappointing.

    Lost Legacy is an education project, not a silly Blog. Authors of such posts have other agendi, as is [...]
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    Posted: September 25, 2009, 1:34am EDT

  • William Letwin Recognises a 'literary embellishment'

    William Letwin, 1963. p. 225. The Origin of Scientific Economics: English economic thought, 1660-1776. Methuen & Co:

    “The invisible hand is introduced as a literary embellishment, an elegant way of summarising an argument already stated, and not, as it has been misrepresented, a dogmatic assertion of ‘natural harmony’ on [...]
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    Posted: September 24, 2009, 4:35pm EDT

  • Adam Smith On CSR

    Shellie Karabell in “On Adam Smith, Gordon Gecko and controls on self-interest” writes about the views of H. Landis Gabell and Filipe Santos in an article on INSEAD Knowledge HERE that presents the corporate social responsibility case, much in line with Adam Smith’s views in Moral Sentiments: “On Adam [...]
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    Posted: September 23, 2009, 10:28am EDT

  • Lost Legacy Awarded an Heize Variety Status

    A new (to me) Blog (Online Universities Weblog) HERE has compiled a list of 100 economics Blogs

    and has placed Lost Legacy at:

    “57. Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy: This blog is a study on Adam Smith.”

    Lost Legacy always welcomes publicity in Blogland, as [...]
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    Posted: September 23, 2009, 5:19am EDT

  • Wrong On Darwin, Right on Adam Smith

    'The Age of Empathy' by Dutch psychologist and primatologist, Frans de Waal, using primate tendencies as a model, contends that humans are hard-wired for compassion. In Los Angeles Times by Sara Lippincott, a freelance editor specializing in science. HERE:

    “De Waal's principal thesis is that when contemplating our [...]
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    Posted: September 22, 2009, 10:08am EDT

  • Examples of Adam Smith's Lost Legacy

    From the World Most Popular 20th century Textbook:

    “Smith’s message said in effect:

    ‘You think you are helping the economics system by your well-meaning laws and interferences. You are not. Laissez-faire; let be; hands off. The oil of self interest will keep the economic gears working in almost [...]
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    Posted: September 21, 2009, 2:42pm EDT

  • Two Errors on Adam Smith

    "dakinikat" writes (19 Sept) “Support your new Alphabet Soup Agency” (HERE):

    “Even Adam Smith, creator of the invisible hand and the term laissez-faire economics, realized the need for government regulation of certain markets.”

    Comments
    Oh, dear!

    Two blatant errors, “creator of the invisible hand [...]
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    Posted: September 20, 2009, 6:34am EDT

  • The Genesis of the Invisible Hand

    Readers will know of my work on identifying the actual meanings that Adam Smith placed on his use of the metaphor of the “invisible hand” and my oft- stated assessment that he used a popular 18th-century metaphor to lighten the work for his readers’ trying to understand the significance of [...]
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    Posted: September 20, 2009, 5:24am EDT

  • Is a Change in Tone More or Less Convincing?

    Pejman Yousefzadeh post on The New Ledger blog (‘a chequer board of nights and days) (HERE) on Stefan McDaniel On Free Trade, the subject of the previous post.

    He comes at his criticism for from a robust rejection of McDaniel than Samuel Gregg.

    Follow the [...]
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    Posted: September 18, 2009, 1:45pm EDT

  • A Modern Moral Attrocity

    Samuel Gregg post in Public Discourse (The Witherspoon Institute) HERE:

    “Free Trade, utility, and the Good”, a response to Stefan McDaniel’s comments on Gregg’s “Free Trade”:

    “No reasonable conception of the good can be limited to the economic realm, let alone utility. Unfortunately many contemporary economists do [...]
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    Posted: September 18, 2009, 12:04pm EDT

  • Research Project to Challenge Modern Economists on Their Invisible Hand Explanations

    I returned to more serious research today for my larger project on the invisible hand. This work has gone slowly up to now because, as I have mentioned, I am waiting for Warren Samuel’s paper to be published (now set for later this year in a collection edited by Jeffrey [...]
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    Posted: September 17, 2009, 3:42pm EDT

  • Don Boudreaux Demolishes Protectionist Author

    As if on cue, following the previous post, my question about which Adam Smith Chicago or Kirkcaldy is challenged is partly answered by Don Boudreau of Café Hayek HERE: under “Witless on Trade”

    Don Boudreaux writes many of the best, brief, articles on free trade and competition in [...]
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    Posted: September 16, 2009, 4:41am EDT

  • Chicago is a Long Way From Kirkcaldy

    Simoleon Sense HERE contains this erroneous gem:

    “The Profile Of Robert Shiller, Mr. Bubble” (via Yale Alumni Magazine)

    They argue that flaws and excess are inherent to a market economy — and that they are not minor. “The economics of the textbooks seeks to minimize as [...]
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    Posted: September 16, 2009, 4:23am EDT

  • A Wild Goose Chase; Another Disappointment

    In another debate elsewhere on the invisible hand in Adam Smith, which I am engaged in lightly, a contributor identified not three uses by Smith of the popular 18th-century metaphor, but four.

    That sent me to the library to search out the source of the 4th use. When [...]
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    Posted: September 15, 2009, 9:33am EDT

  • Link in Freakonomics to Lost Legacy's Paper on the Invisible hand

    In Freakonomics (HERE) they ask:

    Is the Invisible Hand …

    “… one of Adam Smith’s key theories, a “mildly ironic joke,” or “a popular literary 17th- to 18th-century metaphor with no significance”? Arguing for number three, Gavin Kennedy keeps the debate alive, in a new paper published [...]
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    Posted: September 15, 2009, 2:43am EDT

  • I comment on an article covering the ...

    I comment on an article covering the post by Robert Frank (commented on Lost Legacy yesterday) in Seeking Alpha Blog HERE:

    “The Adam Smith concept of the invisible hand, the collective effect of all self-interests guiding economic activity to societal good is fundamentally flawed.”

    You [...]
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    Posted: September 14, 2009, 4:18am EDT

  • Rama Cont is Wrong, not Adam Smith

    In Washington’s Blog HERE: 13 September) it carried a post:

    'Leading Financial Modeling Expert: Adam Smith Was Wrong About the "Invisible Hand"'

    “One of the leaders of the new science of financial modeling - Rama Cont - points out that Adam Smith was wrong about [...]
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    Posted: September 13, 2009, 2:37pm EDT

  • Let Millions of Indian Street Vendors Flourish into Middle Class Taxpayers

    Sauvik Chakraverti (Libertarian Opinion From Indyeah) posts in ANTIDOTE HERE:

    Sauvik Chakraverti covers the eviction of Indian street vendors in Bangalore and discusses the effects of this behaviour on the development of the poor trading classes. He finishes by contrasting the experiences of poor traders in Singapore:
    [...]
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    Posted: September 13, 2009, 12:18pm EDT

  • Modern Versions of Invisible Hands Are Not Compatible with Adam Smith's

    Robert H. Frank, an economist at Cornell University, finds (New York Times 13 Sept) the
    “Flaw in Free Markets: Humans” (HERE)

    “Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand, which says that market forces harness self-serving behavior for the common good, assumes that markets are competitive, and most markets [...]
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    Posted: September 13, 2009, 6:27am EDT

  • News of Warren Samuels' Imminent Account of the Invisible Hand

    I have mentioned several times that Warren Samuels is publishing his considered analysis of the use to which the “invisible hand” has been put over the centuries, and that I am waiting eagerly to read the finished material which he is about to publish.

    In 2007, I attended the [...]
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    Posted: September 12, 2009, 11:41am EDT

  • A Wholly Innocent Adam Smith

    George Hanshaw comments on an article by Mary Lyon: “What Still Ails America” on California Progress Report HERE:

    “…it's fundamental ideology at the root of all America's political "smack down" events.. it's embedded with a convoluted of view of what a society should be... for all... yet, thanks [...]
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    Posted: September 11, 2009, 7:00am EDT

  • Samuel Johnson's Early Observation of the Division of Labour

    ELIZA GRAY (a Bartley Fellow) writes for the Wall Street Journal:

    “Samuel Johnson and the Virtue of Capitalism: The great 18th century writer on commerce and human happiness.”

    HERE:

    “He was even more struck by the contrast between places where markets thrived and those where [...]
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    Posted: September 11, 2009, 5:12am EDT

  • And so the Myth of the Invisible Hand is spread (by economists!)

    Members of the History of Economics ought to know better but so deep is the disinformation about Adam Smith (the one born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, in 1723, not the one invented in Chicago in the 1930s) that an almost futile (its too serious to be utterly laughable) exercise is [...]
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    Posted: September 09, 2009, 1:58pm EDT

  • A Bible Scholar Bears "False Witness"

    Charles Gill writes in Examiner.com HERE:

    “Being born again and putting on the new self”

    “The modern market based system is based upon greed, as per the words of Adam Smith, the founder of Capitalism and the writer of the Wealth of Nations. He argues that [...]
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    Posted: September 09, 2009, 4:56am EDT

  • Jacob Viner Confirmed

    There were two articles this morning in Blogland worth a look over if you have a spare 20 minutes. Both discuss whether Adam Smith was really a Leftist, a view likely to become more common as Adam Smith's the so-called rightist views comes under challenge:

    1 “Was Adam [...]
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    Posted: September 08, 2009, 3:23pm EDT

  • Next Major Project: modern use of the invisible hand

    Background:

    I have completed my response to Daniel Klein’s (“In Adam Smith’s Invisible Hands: comment on Gavin Kennedy” HERE: response to my article: “Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand” (HERE): My final response will be published next week in Econ Journal Watch (September 2009) HERE:

    [...]
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    Posted: September 08, 2009, 11:25am EDT

  • Art Carden on Why Capitalism is Unpopular

    Art Carden writes in The Market Oracle (HERE):

    His article, “Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular?” [abridged drastically below – follow the link] is a tour de force, an imaginative explanation that fits the question with a literate, convincing, and an honest answer. Read the sample and then follow [...]
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    Posted: September 08, 2009, 4:44am EDT

  • Extremism is Seldom Convincing

    Ben Linskey writes for the Observer online (London) HERE:

    “Health care debate masks real issues"

    “There are two basic means by which to do this. One option is to establish a free market, in which the "invisible hand" famously identified by Adam Smith works to distribute goods" [...]
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    Posted: September 07, 2009, 6:40am EDT

  • Was 'Capitalism' Designed by Adam Smith?

    In a debate, so far conducted as an exchange of comments, I have made a longer comment than the system allows, so I have brought it a a post below:

    I refer to my post and subsequent comments 'Beyond the Facts' with Antony North, below'

    'This was not [...]
     | Rate | Archive
    Posted: September 05, 2009, 2:34pm EDT
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