Has Geology Anything to Teach Economists?

An interesting item crossed my screen this evening while in pursuit of Googling Professor Larry Neal of the University of Illinois, Urbana:
The Journal of Economic History (2000), 60:2:317-334 Cambridge University Press:

“A Shocking View of Economic History”, with a tantalizing abstract:

“Economics, like geology, is an historical science. Geology has made incredible advances by accepting it is an historical, rather than a laboratory science. Economic historians can help economics make similar advances by adopting the research strategies of modern geology. Intensely empirical and global in their range, today’s geologists focus on the historical remains of shocking, usually catastrophic, events in the earth’s past. Already empirical and global, economic historians have ample shocks to study whether their specialty is population, technology, or institutions. A few examples of the possibilities should stimulate us to reinvigorate our parent disciplines of economics and history.”

Comment
One of Adam Smith’s close friends was James Hutton, a fellow member of the Scottish Enlightenment, with a special interest in the then early days of geology. Hutton’s fairly quiet challenge to the reigning orthodoxy of the origins and age of the Earth - believed by preachers to be around 6,000 year old, as deduced from the Bible – was quite radical and based on a search for evidence beyond the mythical certainties of the Flood.

Smith took a close interest in all sciences and often walked with Hutton down from Edinburgh to its adjacent Holyrood Park, which played host to an extinct volcano.

Smith listened as Hutton explained its geology. It is not known if he took Smith to Siccar Point about 20 miles down the coast to show him the now famous ‘nonconformity’ of layers of rock, red sandstone and greywacke, which led Hutton to make his famous remark about the Earth’s origins: ‘we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end’.

Hence, I found the abstract for Larry Neal’s paper so interesting, prescient and thought provoking.

My search on Google for details of Larry Neal came from finding a typewritten paper authored by him Adam Smith on “Defence and Opulence”, undated, and at the back of a cupboard, unopened since 1998, though possibly kept by me from my time as a defence economist from the 1970s, which I had put in the cupboard on moving into the house I am presently clearing.

An Impressive Case for Moral Commerce

“Lorenzo” posts a most remarkable, erudite, and trenchant case for commerce over the political, theological, and mythical driving selective conformist attempts at oppression on the Thinking Aloud Blog (HERE)

“Speech at the Launch of Richard Morgan’s book Lessons From The Global Financial Crisis"

[If you read nothing else today (or this week), follow the link and enjoy (learn from, perhaps, too). I give three snippets as tasters:]

”The moral case for free commerce”

"We are here today to launch Richard Morgan’s book, a book that applies C18th wisdom to current circumstances.

One of the great virtues of knowledge of past ideas, is that it forces present thinkers to work harder. Not always an agreeable prospect. Hence the push to define the past as a realm of Stygian moral and intellectual darkness that our present knowing moral splendour has utterly superseded. Thus is current fashionable opinion both elevated and protected.

Yet much that has been paraded in recent decades as allegedly cutting edge thought is little more than ideas from as long ago as the C5th BC re-packaged. Indeterminacy of meaning, for example—which the post-modernists make so much of—was a hot topic for Socrates and the boys. While the politics of Plato’s Republic—with its Platonic Guardians, and their necessary supporting Platonic myths—seems to get endlessly recycled. Judges and international bureaucrats—some of them scientific—are notable current offerings as Platonic Guardians: with supporting Platonic myths from which dissent is, apparently, not to be permitted in polite society.

Against this recycling of the C5th BC, it would be quite an advance if we could get rather more academics and other intellectuals to advance to the standard of some good C18th thinking.

Consider the famous passage by Voltaire in his Letters on the English , first published in 1734.

‘Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There thee Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptized in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: that man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.
Let us consider for a moment how much turgid academic ranting on the allegedly intimate connection between capitalism and bigotry is rendered otiose by this simple observation of what commerce actually means. Commerce does not care for the colour of your skin, your religion, your sex, your sexuality, your ethnicity: what it cares about is the colour of your money. And the worth of your word.

It is politics, with its conjunction of coercion and category – often coercion-by-category – that makes the colour of your skin, your religion, your sex, your sexuality, your ethnicity important, even fatally important. Commerce wants your money and so must, perforce, attend to what you want. Commerce-as-commerce is not interested in any of the vile wars waged by believers—both secular and religious—against human nature as it is in the name of human nature as it is supposed to be. Commerce just wants your money. Preferably again and again. “It is better for me if you are happy with what I do” is practical commerce.’ …

…” The marginal in society are frequently rather better treated by commerce than by politics. A Fortune 500 company is much more likely to acknowledge same-sex relationships than a US State is. The former cares about getting and keeping good staff, and reaching customers. While political and religious entrepreneurs often seek to sell effortless virtue: to sell a sense of unearned self-satisfaction from simply being different to some other group—whites feeling terribly virtuous for not being black, gentiles feeling terribly virtuous for not being Jewish, straights for not being gay, those born and raised Protestant for not being Catholic, or vice versa. And so on. …

…” Long before people talked of the “pink dollar”, there was the Jewish ducat. While women could scale the heights of commerce when they were still formally barred from even the foothills of politics. The first African-American woman to become a millionaire was not Oprah Winfrey, but Madame C. J. Walker, who became a millionaire by 1910: and if you were a millionaire in 1910, you were really a millionaire. She achieved this by selling hair-care products, employing many African-American women in the process, quite deliberately so: no doubt a grave offence against the Equal Opportunity Act—don’t tell Rob Hulls.

When one looks at the denunciations of vulgar merchants and “immoral” commerce, again and again one sees the real complaint is that they attend to what people want, not what the critic thinks people ought to want. That they attend to what people are like, not what people allegedly ought to be like.

To any supporter of a static social order, the restless energy of commerce is a threat. And what social order is more static than one that seeks equality of outcome? The societies that have most raged against commerce have also created some of the most appalling horrors in history, struggling mightily and brutally against what people want.

Indeed, if one wants to establish any bigoted social order, one of the first things one has to do is to restrain commerce. As Thomas Sowell points out, part of the impetus for the Jim Crow laws in the American South was to ensure that a white person buying a first class train ticket did not find themselves sitting next to a black person. For, left to themselves, the railroad companies only cared if you could pay.”

Comment
There's much more in similar vein too.

The book to which “Lorenzo” refers is by Richard Morgan (With a Preface from Ian M. McDonald, University of Melbourne):

“Lessons from the Global Crisis: the relevance of Adam Smith on Morality and Free Markets”.

Order it from Amazon or direct to Connor Court Publishing (ISBN: 9781921421273): sales@connorcourt.com. Price: $19.95 (Australian)

Richard Morgan, with whom I have corresponded and who kindly sent me early drafts of his arguments based on Adam Smith for his book, is an experienced business man and is also engaged in public affairs. He practices what he believes in.

I commend his book to readers.

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 as a nation need to accept the proven fact that Adam Smith was wrong when he stated that the optimum in society occurs when everybody works in their own best interests, and accept John Nash’s Nobel prize winning dissertation in economics that states that society works best when we work in our own best interests and in the best interests of society as a whole.”

Comment
The trouble is for this argument, Adam Smith did not say everybody should work (with whom?) in ‘their own best interest’. That is a crude, narrow and incorrect representation of his philosophy (and economics).

Nor did John Nash state that “an economy works best when we work in our own best interests and in the interests of society as a whole”. That is a crude, partial, and misleading statement of his work.

Where did Paul F. Hosman, residing in Kalamazoo (I remember the song), get his ideas about Smith and Nash from? Could it be the Hollywood film, “A Beautiful Mind”?

From the rest of his post he seems to be hooked up on a crude DNA theory that some are rich and some are poor because of their inherited DNA profile giving them, or not, as the case may be, “Intelligence, beauty and skill”.

I take it from this “evidence” that Paul has read bits on Adam Smith and John Nash, though not enough to understand either author’s ideas - Moral Philosophy in the case of Smith; mathematical modeling (Prisoner’s Dilemma) in the case of Nash, plus, perhaps a magazine article or two on genetics, DNA and the inheritance of characteristics.

Arguments prefaced with a need to accept “the proven fact” about something, of which I am familiar (Smith and Nash) and which is also not a “fact” and certainly not “proven”, but manifestly wrong are reminiscent of “dinner party” debates and a few “bar room” arguments (the latter in days when I drank alcohol).

Since my younger days, I have learnt to pass over such “arguments” to save embarrassing the host and the speaker, and to calm my blood pressure.

Listen to Weekly Podcast Series on The Theory of Moral Sentiments

EconTalk’s host Russ Roberts, is starting an ambitious podcast series on 15 April about Adam Smith's lesser-known masterpiece, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, on the 250th anniversary of its initial publication under the auspices of the Library of Economics and Liberty (HERE), with Daniel Klein, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, whose teaching focuses on economic principles, public policy issues, and the liberal tradition of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek. He is the chief editor of Econ Journal Watch, an online journal dedicated to economic criticism from a Smith-Hayek viewpoint.

Russell Roberts is Professor of Economics and the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is especially interested in communicating economics to non-economists. He blogs at Cafe Hayek along with Don Boudreaux (HERE

An overview podcast of the upcoming series is available (HERE):

“Klein on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Episode 1--An Overview.”

Dan Klein, of George Mason University, highlights key passages and concepts of the book including its relation to The Wealth of Nations, Smith's willingness to accept "vague, loose, and indeterminate" rules rather than precise ones for moral behaviour, Smith's criteria for assessing what is moral and what is not, and Smith's conception of justice.

This podcast is part of the EconTalk Book Club on The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It will be followed by four bonus podcasts in the coming weeks going through the book systematically. Interested listeners who wish to do their reading in advance can find the schedule along with more background on the book on the EconTalk book club page, accessible from the EconTalk home page.

I have listened to the initial overview podcast (1hr 23m) and warmly endorse its content and approach, which takes the form of Russ Roberts posing questions and Dan Klein responding, and with both discussing related themes. This approach works well in my view.

I don’t quite agree with everything, though my areas of doubt are minor. I particularly liked the initial statements that Adam Smith’s image is largely a caricature (including the ‘so-called’ invisible hand), and Dan Klein got my attention quickly with his upfront assessment of Smith's alleged religiosity being muted and unclear. Currently, I am working on my paper on “Adam Smith’s Religiosity: a review of the evidence” for the History of Economics Society annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, in June, and found this early assessment encouraging.

The idea is for Professor Klein to deal with Moral Sentiments in parts, with part 1 being covered next Wednesday, 15 April.

Listeners are advised to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments, part 1, which, if you have not got a hard copy to hand, can be downloaded free HERE:
This is the 6th edition, as published in 1790 in London.

You can get a copy of the defintive Glasgow Edition, published by Liberty Fund in 1982, and available in a low-priced edition from Liberty Fund (try Amazon for a really low-price). I saw details of an on-line version of this edition but I have mislaid them – perhaps a more careful reader can provide details for Lost Legacy?

Part 1 is only 66 pages long and gets you into Smith’s theme, ready to hear Professors Klein and Roberts go through its main ideas. I shall probably offer my own comments too...

A Classic Example of the Misuse of a Metaphor

John McCarthy writes in Florida Today HERE:

“Gas-price rise 'illogical'
AAA spokesman can't equate it with the fall in demand and crude oil cost”

One supposedly inviolable law of classical economics is that when the supply of a resource is greater than demand for it, the price of that resource will fall. The "invisible hand" of the marketplace should see to that, the father of economics, Adam Smith, said.

Comment
I know of no ‘inviolable law of classical economics' that ever mentions ‘an invisible hand’ and I am sure that John McCarthy or anybody else does not know of one either.

I do know of countless statements since the 1950s that says there is a ‘theory’, ‘concept’, even ‘paradigm’, and now a ‘law’ that Adam Smith believed that market places were managed by ‘an invisible hand’, but that is not the same as Adam Smith actually having done so.

In fact, he didn’t; he mentions the 18th-century literary metaphor on ‘an invisible hand’ only once in Wealth Of Nations, but not in reference to his theory of markets, which he analyses and elaborates in Books I and II of his classic work.

His sole reference to ‘an invisible hand’ occurs in Book IV in his brilliant critique of mercantile political economy – the very same economic system practised by Georgian Britain, which caused the American rebellion in 1776-83, and produced eventually the United States of America.

And for the record, Smith didn’t mention the metaphor in the other two books of Wealth of Nations (Books III and V).

His reference to ‘an invisible hand’ occurs after he has explained how the risk- avoidance behaviours of some merchants prompts them not to send their scarce capital abroad to the British colonies in North America (dangerous sea passage, unknown trading partners, backed by local colonial laws and practices, and uncertain, though high, profits).

Their risk avoidance prompted these merchants (but by no means all, of course – those prepared to trade in the colonies did well because of the British monopoly of colonial trade, backed by the Royal Navy’s enforcement of the Navigation Acts) to invest their capital domestically, without the risks of sea voyages, where they knew with whom they traded and had knowledge of the reliability of the local courts, and were more certain about their, albeit perhaps lower, profits.

So, risk-avoidance, and the obvious arithmetical law that the whole is the sum of its parts, led to domestic British capital formation to be higher than it would be if more merchants had sent their capital abroad. Additional domestic capital invested locally added to the total of domestic investment, which in turn added to local employment and to national output.

Having said all these over several pages in Book IV, Adam Smith added the metaphor that these merchants – but clearly not the others! – were ‘led by an invisible hand’ to add to domestic investment and output, though they only intended ‘their own security’.

Look it up in Wealth Of Nations (WN IV.ii.9: p 456). That is all Adam Smith meant by the invisible hand- a summary explanation of what he had explained in straight economic terms, but never a ‘theory’, and certainly not a ‘law’, except, perhaps, of arithmetic.

Indeed, John McCarthy uses the rest of his article to explain with potential facts what is causing gas prices to remain high – real prospects of a refinery strike by the US Steel workers Union in Florida, causing retail gas companies to stock-pile gas inventories in the event of the strike. The higher the price of gas at the pump at present, the more of their future supplies will remain in their inventories for use during the strike. That will keep gas customers driving for longer during a strike.

Correct analysis from John McCarthy without any need to misuse Adam Smith’s literary metaphor. He could have re-cast his wrong reference to Adam Smith by, perhaps, suggesting that the oil companies are being restrained by an ‘invisible hand’ from reducing their prices in the prospect of the strike-bound near-future situation! (Just joking.)

But that is not how modern economists, and those influenced by them, see how Smith’s use of the famous metaphor was quite different from their 20th-century invented attribution to him.

Sociability and Human Evolution

Darwiniana Blog (30 January) carries Freedom Evolves! Huxley’s Evolution #2: ‘We have discovered Huxley ’s evolution #2′ HERE:

“This ‘survival of the fittest’ aspect is, in any case, demonstrably false of man’s social experience, as the mechanism of cultural evolution. Thus extreme competition is met by the response of social law in the evolution of civilization, if not economy. And the place of Adam Smith here is entirely complex and misleading, this philosopher being a de facto source of a new ethics, even as his work is polarized between an economic and moral dimension. Survival of the fittest business firm is simply another process, as is the tonic of Olympiad sports competition. The issue of evolutionary causality in the study of the evolution of civilization has been so confused by assumptions of material causative motive, as in the imputation of economic determinism, that the real evolution of social cooperation seems to have been forgotten. In general, theories of evolution must themselves interact with the near future of all free action, in a confusion of external observer, and temporal participant, ‘acting out theory’.

Comment
“The issue of evolutionary causality in the study of the evolution of civilization has been so confused by assumptions of material causative motive, as in the imputation of economic determinism, that the real evolution of social cooperation seems to have been forgotten.”

Crude applications of evolution to economics systems are certainly flawed. Animal spirits of ‘red in tooth and claw’ competition, beloved of advocates of certain strains of corporatism, are toxic (to use a contemporary word in vogue) for the sciences of human behaviours.

I confess to not quite getting what John Lander (the author of the Darwiniana Blog) is on about in his claims for ‘eonic’ insight into these matters,especially with his apparent assertion that the Bible is ‘a document of interest,’ as police investigators call certain suspects, but I concur with his statement ‘the real evolution of social cooperation seems to have been forgotten’.

The sociability of primates, in particular the Hominine lineage through the evolution of about 18 species before Homo sapiens emerged dominant, is the key to understanding the crucial role that social co-operation – a set of behaviours, not genes – played in the biological evolution of our species over several million years.

I discuss this in my paper on the “Pre-history of Bargaining: an multi-disciplinary treatment, Part I”, which you may download from Lost Legacy’s Home Page (in red, at the top; just click and follow the link).

I am presently working on developing this paper and the research supporting it into a book-length treatment (title to be decided). Adam Smith, you may be assured, plays a major role in my approach, though most of today's epigones and their acolytes may not recognise the Adam Smith from Kirkcaldy. who was quite different from the so-called 'Adam Smith' from US academe.

A Distorted Version of History

John Kozy writes on Global Research.ca, Blog, 26 January (HERE):

‘Capitalism Snuffs out the Age of Enlightenment's Candle’

“Mercantilism initially became the dominant economic theory and its implementation was carried out by imperial conquest and exploitation, and Adam Smith's classical economics was introduced merely as a more efficient way of expanding national wealth. The successful adoption of classical economists can be attributed to him and John Locke and those self-seeking aristocrats who recognized the license to steal that it provided.

Both Locke and Smith lived in a class-structured monarchial England. Although they themselves were not aristocrats, they certainly were not commoners. Both had aristocratic benefactors. The first Earl of Shaftsbury, who became Lord Chancellor, became Locke's benefactor, and Locke became the secretary of a very powerful board. Adam Smith's patron was Lord Kames. Smith obtained a lucrative post as tutor to the young duke of Buccleuch. So although neither Locke nor Smith was an aristocrat, their close associates were and both benefited from and shared in the privileges of the aristocracy. Sociologists claim that people who have a similar location within a system of property relations develop other important similarities of thought, values, style, behavior, and politics. Since both Locke's and Smith's principal associations were with members of the aristocracy, they both acquired and attempted to preserve and perhaps further establishment values.

Although Locke has gained some standing as a philosopher while Smith has not (even though he was a professor of moral philosophy), Locke made a fundamental categorical mistake in his Second Treatise on Government which Thomas Jefferson was quick to notice. Locke named life, liberty, and property as natural rights. Even in Locke's England, society could at least try to protect the lives and liberty of even common people, but it could not attempt to protect their property since they had none. So Jefferson altered this list of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Since, in most respects, only the English aristocracy held property, its protection became a protection of the status quo. And protection of establishment property even today is the fundamental reason for the distinction between those economic activities that are legitimate and those that aren't. That alone accounts for the difference between selling a consumer a product that is a dud, and a consumer's buying a product with a check that is a dud. The haves get to keep what they have while the have-nots get fleeced.

Smith, too, is an establishment philosopher. As Richard Reeb has pointed out in "An Historian on British History" (http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2008/12/historian-on-british-history.html)

"There were essentially two approaches that kings of the early modern nation states took toward the generation of national wealth. One supported acquisition of precious metals and hoarding them for national purposes ... Another view, favored in Britain, was that it was better to encourage merchants to build their fortunes with limited regulation, as a growing commerce funded government with minimal taxation. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations provided the most powerful argument for the second view of national wealth. The British government was no less tempted to commandeer the resources of the country than the Spanish, but Smith made a compelling case for laissez-faire (let them do as they please) as far more productive than national missions to exploit natural resources the world over to enrich the government’s coffers. Smith’s famous "invisible hand" was not blind to the avarice of businessmen (quite the contrary) but rather saw them as more efficient producers than any government could ever be." Smith's goal was not only to preserve the establishment but to make its economic avarice and exploitation more efficient. In effect, the adoption of classical/neo-classical economics not only succeeded, it extinguished the goals of the Age of Enlightenment and put an end to humanity's progress toward liberté, égalité, fraternité and what Lincoln so aptly expressed when he spoke of "a new birth of freedom" and a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Not a single such government exists today, and our nation states, although slightly altered in form, mimic the monarchial states of seventeenth century Europe in which common people not only exist for the sake of the state and its institutions but are thought of as expendable.

Some economists may claim that this is mere happenstance, not a necessary result of the economic system, but that claim is vacuous. Under classical economics, individuals supposedly act in their own self-interest as economic agents who dedicate themselves to those economic activities that bring the greatest income. But if this were so, society would be impossible. No one would be willing to do the low-paying jobs that the existence of society requires. Who would be a minimum-wage sewer worker? Who would be a public school teacher? Who would be a nurse? Who would be an artist, a serious (as opposed to a popular) composer, a social worker, an ambulance driver, a fireman, a policeman, a janitor, a door man, a porter, an factory worker, an oil rig worker, a lumberjack, a garbage collector, a checkout clerk at a grocery store, a college professor in a public institution, or even a cleric? People would do most of these jobs only out of necessity, which means that the system impales its adherents on the horns of a dilemma. Either Classical economics is founded on the completely false postulate of economic self-interest or it must be designed so that the largest numbers of people in a society are never allowed to pursue their own self-interests as economic agents. (Anyone who believes that adopting a theory that impales its adherents on the horns of a dilemma is rational is delusional.) One economic aspect of this design is Smith's subsistence theory of wages. (Only a person with a low opinion of common humanity could even have proposed such a thing.)

John Locke, Adam Smith, and Classical economists snuffed out the Age of Enlightenment's candle! They brought human progress to a dead stop.


“Mercantilism initially became the dominant economic theory and its implementation was carried out by imperial conquest and exploitation, and Adam Smith's classical economics was introduced merely as a more efficient way of expanding national wealth.”

Comment
John Kozy sees the world through cracked glasses if he can write and believe that “Adam Smith's classical economics was introduced merely as a more efficient way of expanding national wealth”. By what social mechanism are such convenient arrangements between a system of government and an individual moral philosopher is ‘fixed’ politically?

Adam Smith independently observed, including reading widely and visiting people from all ranks of British 18th-century society, and wrote about what he observed without fear or favour to anyone. He was not a salaried hack, as implied by John Kozy.

“Both Locke and Smith lived in a class-structured monarchial England.”

Comments
From Canada it may look like that – at least for those lazy enough not to check their sources – but Smith lived all his life in monarchical Britain, and arguably, so did Locke since the crowns of England and Scotland were unified in 1604 and for just over 100 years there was a union of crowns consisting of Scotland and England. Since 1707 there was a union of parliaments creating both a united kingdom and a united parliamentary government within a constitutional monarchy.

It is a fair bet that John Kozy’s ancestors in the 18th century also lived in a ‘class-structured monarchical’ country (and he still does living in Canada), which does not in any way compromise his intellectual independence, any more than it compromised Locke’s (who suffered exile 1682-1688).

Smith’s intellectual independence is a fact too. His closest associates (example, Dugald Stewart) were investigated in 1793 by the legal authorities who were suspicious of Smith’s alleged sympathies with political dissenters against the government – the French Terror caused widespread fear and loathing of anything likely to promote unrest among the British labouring classes – the Wealth Of Nations was a likely prime exhibit for a proposed prosecution of his followers.

It’s interesting what a bit of context does for an empty narrative.

“Adam Smith's patron was Lord Kames. Smith obtained a lucrative post as tutor to the young duke of Buccleuch. So although neither Locke nor Smith was an aristocrat, their close associates were and both benefited from and shared in the privileges of the aristocracy.”

Comment
‘Lord’ Kames was not an aristocrat. He was Henry Home, a jurist, who on his appointment to the bench took the honorary title of ‘Lord’, as is still the custom. He was also an accomplished man of letters (Historical Law Tracts, 1758; Essays on Morality and Natural religion, 1751; Sketches of the History of Man, 1774), which apparently counts for nothing with John Kozy. Benjamin Franklin also met Lord Kames – perhaps he was ‘guilty’ of whatever too?

Smith’s appointment as a tutor to ‘the young duke of Buccleuch’ was arranged by the duke’s stepfather, Charles Townshend, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (of the Boston ‘tea tax’ fame) who had read Smith’s Moral Sentiments and was impressed.

But in what manner Smith ‘benefited from and shared in the privileges of the aristocracy’ is not said. Smith never had a vote under the then franchise; he lived frugally (no carriage-and-four for him), and he was scornful of ‘trinkets, baubles, and contrivances’. His only ‘treasure’ was his library.

“Since both Locke's and Smith's principal associations were with members of the aristocracy, they both acquired and attempted to preserve and perhaps further establishment values.’

Comment
Guilt by association is unbecoming of discourse, more suited to tabloids and cynics (and well practised by totalitarian states). If John Kozy has read Smith’s Moral Sentiments (1759) he would know that Smith found ‘establishment values’ somewhat lacking when set against the standards set by moral philosophy. He was also deeply sceptical of the manner in which sovereigns, legislators and those who influenced them behaved.

There are enough quotations available in his books for ‘witch-hunter’ inquisitors to make a case that Smith, for the paranoid, was a dangerous radical. I suggest the John takes a look. True, Smith observed that the ‘distinction of ranks’ was important for social stability, as was justice and the rule of law. He had enough knowledge of what happened in history, recent and ancient, when instability reigned, the lower ranks came off worse, and the upper ranks were replaced by people who behaved the same, and often worse.

“In effect, the adoption of classical/neo-classical economics not only succeeded, it extinguished the goals of the Age of Enlightenment…”

Comment
Neo-classical economics is modern and is not related to Adam Smith or anybody writing within 70 years of his death in 1790. By then the Age of Enlightenment had passed with the deaths of those who made it possible (despite, of course, their insidious associations within British society, a paradox left unexplained amidst John Kozy’s bile).

Even Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations was cast aside, except for occasional genuflection in vague remembrance, though hardly ever read, as the British and North American economies carried on versions of mercantile political economy, colonialism, protectionism, jealousies of trade, wars for trivial ends, monopolies, and such like.

In its place, a spurious ‘laissez-faire’, falsely attributed to Adam Smith, was practised, allegedly, and a false ‘small government’, also attributed to Adam Smith, became the watchword on the 19th century, as military expenditures continued to climb and ‘non-intervention’ was practised brutally for those merciless in face of pestilence, famine, the factory system, and ignorance.

“One economic aspect of this design is Smith's subsistence theory of wages. (Only a person with a low opinion of common humanity could even have proposed such a thing.)”

This is so absurd as to be risible. Adam Smith did not propose any such thing. He observed what was going on; he did not propose such a policy (except if wages were below subsistence). The subsistence wage was the fact of the time, imposed by those employers who saw low wages as a means of disciplining labourers to work long hours to make ends meet. Smith identifies the proponents of such ideas and argues against them.

He railed against the combinations of the masters, ‘conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy’, and described the combination of workmen as ‘defensive’. (Wealth Of Nations, I.viii.13: p 84)

He also added:

“Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged” (WN I.viii.36: p 96)

May I respectfully suggest that John Kozy read Chapter 8, Book I of Wealth Of Nations before he asserts notions that tend to undermine this reader’s faith that he knows of what he talks about.

He refers above to a post in Lost Legacy (from which I am grateful). I suggest he reads more of our posts, and at least get his account of Adam Smith and his role as a man of letters straight.

"John Locke, Adam Smith, and Classical economists snuffed out the Age of Enlightenment's candle! They brought human progress to a dead stop."

Comment
Excuse my astonishment at this absurd sentence.

Who were the leading lights in the Enlightenment in Britain?

Why, the very same Adam Smith, Lord Kames, Joseph Black, James Hutton, John Simmons, Dr Reid, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Colin Maclaurin, James Millar, and such like, and all of them known to, or who mixed with, Adam Smith in the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of London - Smith was a fellow of both - and many of them attended his famous Sunday dinners at Panmure House, Edinburgh for intellectual conversations.

If John Kozy really believed that Adam Smith (and John Locke, though wrong period) "snuffed out the Age of Enlightenment's candle" he is either on the brink of a sensational career of Nobel-Prize potential ahead of him if he can prove it, or he is worthy only of sad commiseration.

A Fair Question: how many economists and biologists have read Darwin and Smith's Works

Paul Walker, a regular reader of Lost Legacy in Christchurch New Zealand Blogs at: Anti-Dismal ('A blog on all things to do with economics and related subjects') HERE:

“Shocked but not surprised

Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution writes in a posting Blogging *The Origin of Species*,

“That is a worthwhile endeavor and you will find the blog here. Nonetheless I was shocked (but not surprised) to read the following:

“Evolutionary biologist John Whitfield is reading Origin for the first time and writing about it, chapter by chapter.

I would ask Tyler, if he is shocked but not surprised to learn that a biologist hasn't read Darwin, then how shocked, but not surprised, would he be to discover that few economists have read Adam Smith?”

Comment
I hope many more economists will read both Moral Sentiments (1759) and Wealth Of Nations (1776) in this 250th commemorative year for the publication of Moral Sentiments.

It is also the 250th commemorative year for the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, a book well worth reading.

I read it in 2000 while preparing my ‘Pre-History of Bargaining’ ms (you can read my paper, “The Pre-history of Bargaining: an inter-disciplinary treatment, part I”, by clicking on the link (in red) on the Lost Legacy Home Page).

I plan to re-read Darwin’s Origin of Species this summer, and his other books developing this theme as applied to Natural Selection and Sex, and his book on facial gestures among humans and other animals.