Shorter Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations, Book I

My other summer reading project is The Wealth of Nations. A while back The Economist made a list of essential economists that everyone should know about, and its mini-bio of Adam Smith contained an intriguing mention of Smith approving of a certain level of regulation. As someone who's only ever seen him invoked in the cause of completely unregulated capitalism, my interest was piqued.

What's had me blocked on this read is that I thought I might summarize what I find Smith actually saying, so after finishing book I (of V) I didn't want to read any further until I could find the time to post about it. So here we are.

Before getting started, I have a different book recommendation for everyone. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created has turned out to be excellent preparation for this book, since Smith's obsession with silver means that he is never far from the shadow of Potosí. Plus 1493 is engagingly written, up to date with the latest research, and not an absolute doorstop of a book, none of which can be said about The Wealth of Nations.

( It gets long... )

Yup, Adam Smith, patron saint of capitalism, says that businesspeople are absolutely the last people you should be listening to when considering how the economy should work.

That's a good cliffhanger to end on for now. Stay tuned for Book II, which thankfully is much shorter.

Weekly diary, July 21, 2019

I got to go to OSCON 2019 this week. Saw interesting and not-so-interesting presentations, learned things, might have a new favorite programming language. (Full disclosure: I get excited about new programming languages very easily.)

I'm seeing a lot of posts all around the net the last couple days on the topics of Boy It's Hot Today and What The Moon Landing Means To Me. It's only just topped 80F here, and as a child of the 1980s, the moon landing is primarily associated in my mind with reading bitter commentary about how Kennedy blew up the chance to do space right.

Cat

Barbecue Cat, one of Phosphor's feral relatives, considers whether it's worth getting up from the nice warm patio and scurrying away, or whether the human might keep its distance.

Fandom

Here a are the rest of the summer premieres. I seem to be on a country music quote kick.

Somebody on the Amazing Stories editorial staff is tinkering with the look and feel of the blog. It looks like maybe I can stop worrying about finding at least one screencap that looks decent when trimmed to a square image.

Books and media

Nothing watched beyond anime. I am definitely going to keep watching BEM even though it looks like it won't be bloggable due to limited distribution.

I finished reading Lost Cities of Africa and will say something more about it at some point.

Gaming

The impending release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is getting me excited about Fire Emblem all over again, except I don't have a Switch and won't be getting one any time soon, so instead I've gone back to Fire Emblem: Awakening for a playthrough on Hard mode.

Have also been checking in on Fallen London. I'm not really sure what I'm doing but I seem to be making progress.

( Politics )