The Wealth of Nations

“At the end of March, the composer David Lang debuted a modern piece of music set to a 250-year-old book, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.”

“I caught up with David Lang about a week after the last of the four performances of The Wealth of Nations, and I asked what it felt like to work on a big new piece like this for years...”

“The phrase the invisible hand appears exactly once in The Wealth of Nations. It is in a section about whether local businessman would be tempted to use foreign trade to enrich themselves at the expense of their nation.”

“In book five of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith would appear to be in favor of this. For a very small expense, the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.”

“One day, our producer Zach Lipinsky heard about a future Philharmonic oratorio called The Wealth of Nations. You may recognize that title. It is a book published in 1776 by the Scotsman Adam Smith, who is widely seen as the father of modern economics”

“And the piece we're talking about is Lang's new oratorio, The Wealth of Nations, which repurposes text from the Adam Smith book of the same name.”

“I'd forgotten that Dubner had done this three-part series on Adam Smith, and to win the Adam Smith Award, Dubner crafted an absolutely brilliant speech in which he talked about Adam Smith's life and details; it was really masterful.”

“it really crashes head long into this view in economics which I've been so indoctrinated into with so many years in the field an Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations he laid out what's called The Invisible Hand Theory”

“Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations, laid out what's called the Invisible Hand Theory, which is the idea that in a market setting, if every individual pursues their own self-interest, the market equilibrium is one that has many amazing characteristics.”

“and Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations he laid out what's called The Invisible Hand Theory”

“It really crashes headlong into this view in economics which I've been so indoctrinated into with so many years in the field and Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations.”

“You're referring to the Adam Smith of The Wealth of Nations, but there's also the Adam Smith of The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

“and then later an Rand we understood that capitalism was the way reality needs to work because all the incentives run in the right direction”

“Adam Smith noted that in wealth of the Nations and noted that unfettered capitalism could lead to some really bad things”

“1776 was the year of the birth of the nation that was the year of The Wealth of Nations that was Adam Smith's famous text it was also the year of the Declaration of Independence and I think that both of these are America's parents”

“that was the year of The Wealth of Nations that was Adam Smith's famous text”

“self-interest was something that he wrote a bit about in his later book The Wealth of Nations”

“Self-interest was something that he wrote a bit about in his later book The Wealth of Nations, but in the Theory of Moral Sentiments he writes about our self-concern in a way that I think would help modern people look at it in a different light.”

“and i encountered a basically what i encountered a set of writings from people that said they were the inheritors adam smith but adam smith for the first time right which is the wealth of nations and kind of this notion of emergent emergent societies”

“and i encountered a basically what i encountered a set of writings from people that said they were the inheritors adam smith but adam smith for the first time right which is the wealth of nations and kind of this notion of emergent emergent uh societies and realized oh there's this whole world out here of people”

“So, one of my favorite lines in The Wealth of Nations is from the very last paragraph. Glory Liu again. This is where Smith is giving his withering last remarks on the British Empire.”

“He says the pursuit of wealth, here's the person who wrote The Wealth of Nations. He says the pursuit of wealth is a fool's game.”

“So, of course, I went in and I said, "I really am happy that you like this project, and you know, I have another project to make a piece out of The Wealth of Nations." Had you already read the book? I wasn't going to read the book unless I had a gig to read the book.”

“I asked what she thought when she was first approached about singing The Wealth of Nations. Honestly, I was surprised because I read The Wealth of Nations when I was at Columbia cuz that's one of the core texts that all the students have to read. And, you know, back then I remember it not being a very scintillating read.”

“this is the 250th anniversary, not just of the Declaration of Independence, but also of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, where he basically for the first time in human history described the free market system.”

“Adam Smith, the you know father of capitalism had this idea of the invisible hand which if you go back and look at what he was actually talking about what he was describing it like literally in the paragraph where he writes about the invisible hand he has all these requirements...”

“Classical economics does not really use math, is very close to political economy. It's concerned with, as Smith puts it, "The wealth of nations."”

“If you think free markets mean there is no government, you read it wrong; go back and reread Adam Smith.”

“because I do feel like everything is still just like Adam Smith Wealth of Nations and it's like there's been Marxism there's been other things but nothing has topped that guy's like idea for the global economy”

“Adam Smith wrote this book called the theory of moral sentiments before he wrote ”

“Adam Smith, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he wrote this philosophy book; he was taught by a professor who was a big fan of Stoics and it’s called The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

“Increasing returns, first described by Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations in 1776. You remember the pin factory idea?”

“It was the monks of Salaka in the 1200s who first came up with this concept and even Adam Smith himself, I think, would be very comfortable in this exchange that you and I are having about the lack of primacy of the free market as it relates to human goods.”

“I think the partial answer to what you're asking might be to think along the lines of Adam Smith, who saw two different spheres, and in 'The Wealth of Nations,' he talked about the invisible hand which governs the market, but then he also talked about the theory of moral sentiments, which was the realms where the market didn't go.”

“I mean, which to your point, I think is that if you look at his theory of capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, if you look at his theory of moral sentiments, which I think he actually wrote beforehand, you can see that it's embedded in a particular social context, which is frankly very biblically informed.”

“and the Scottish Enlightenment which after all produced some of the greatest ideas human beings have ever had think of Adam Smith's contribution The Wealth of Nations the theory of moral sentiments that's the kind of intellectual Legacy that I think of myself as being responsible for”

“You're referring to the Adam Smith of The Wealth of Nations but there's also the Adam Smith of the theory of moral sentiments”

“now this is something that Adam Smith wrote about in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations that any Gathering of businessmen is a conspiracy against the consumer and so all of these interest groups like a sloppy uh influence written bureaucratic and political structure”

“and actually Adam Smith talked about this in his his wealth and Wealth of Nations”

“certainly rard I find totally like reading a cardboard cutout version of uh of the wealth of of The Wealth of Nations it's uh I find his worth trivial”

“I really feel strongly about this that this book is to the 21st century what Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was to the 18th and 19th”

“capitalism has lost the first volume of Adam Smith the second volume is Wealth of Nations”

“One of the other things that happened to kind of—but this thing was full steam ahead when Adam Smith wrote a book in 1776 called 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.'”

“This goes all the way back to Adam Smith.”

“They know about The Wealth of Nations and that Margaret Thatcher, the enemy, always had a copy of Wealth of Nations, the legend goes, in her handbag.”

“When Adam Smith was writing The Wealth of Nations in the mid-18th century, it wasn't supermarkets he was worried about.”

“Here is a passage from The Wealth of Nations read by John Ewell: While they were traders only, they managed their trade successfully and were able to pay from their profits a moderate dividend to the proprietors of the stock.”

“At its peak, which was around the mid-18th century when Adam Smith was writing The Wealth of Nations, the East India Company controlled...”

“Writing in The Wealth of Nations, Smith blamed the severity of the famine on the East India Company's improper regulations and injudicious restraints.”

“Oh yes, that's another phrase I really love, and to be honest, there are parts of The Wealth of Nations that are mesmerizingly mundane.”

“So I think the association of Smith with economics has privileged that particular element in his analysis, which is more apparent in The Wealth of Nations.”

“It was in this 17th century building that Smith completed the final editions of his two masterworks: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and, of course, The Wealth of Nations.”

“I'm sure he'd have risen with the sun and done some work on his revisions to The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations before he put on his dress coat and wandered up Edinburgh's beautiful Royal Mile.”

“While he was able to make meaningful revisions to The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations during his time at Panmure, he was also, unfortunately, really busy with his day job.”

“I know The Wealth of Nations is the most famous book, but for me, as mentioned earlier, it's the Theory of Moral Sentiments that serves as the true guide.”

“The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations; those were the books Adam Smith left behind.”

“If you know anything at all about Adam Smith, it probably comes from his second and most famous book, The Wealth of Nations.”

“In that same year, a Scottish economist named Adam Smith launched another revolution with a book entitled The Wealth of Nations, which exposed for all time the folly of protectionism.”

“And then, of course, with The Wealth of Nations, how do you understand the forces of national wealth?”

“Obviously, some biographers suggest that he was certainly looking at things in the early part of The Wealth of Nations; he talks about pin manufacture, and obviously in Kirkcaldy, that was in the next village to here.”

“If you have read even a little bit of The Wealth of Nations, you may recall the passage that George Proudfoot is talking about here—the pin factory.”

“Here is how Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations: 'If they had all worked separately and independently and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made 20; perhaps not one pin in a day.'”

“What is Smith trying to explain in The Wealth of Nations?”

“Adam Smith changed that; here is a famous passage from the first of five books that make up The Wealth of Nations: 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest.'”

“It also says on the site stood the home of his mother, in which he lived from 1767 to 1776, and completed The Wealth of Nations.”

“But you see the references to The Wealth of Nations.”

“It doesn't say The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but The Theory of Moral Sentiments tells you so much more about Smith than what The Wealth of Nations does.”

“You see the humanity and understanding of people from The Theory of Moral Sentiments even more so than from The Wealth of Nations.”

“Years later in The Wealth of Nations, he would blame the incentives, explaining that professors were paid well whether they taught well or not at the University of Oxford.”

“It has been said that Thatcher carried a copy of The Wealth of Nations in her handbag.”

“Here was the big question: would Britain be, as Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, a nation of shopkeepers or a nation of government bureaucrats?”

“There were just the two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, with multiple editions of each since he was an inveterate reviser.”

“Smith later very famously said that this letter brought on me ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I made on the entire commercial system of Great Britain, meaning of course The Wealth of Nations.”

“The Wealth of Nations is an attack on the entire commercial system of Great Britain.”

“In Book Five of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith would appear to support this: "For a very small expense, the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those essential parts of education.”

“Yes, because The Wealth of Nations is an enormous, sprawling book \u2014elephantine\u2014and it's filled with facts, figures, and arguments, some of them not entirely consistent.”

“Do you really think he would publish The Wealth of Nations after dedicating so many years to it with an incomplete understanding of the government's role in providing services like education and transportation?”

“As Dennis Rasmussen explained, reconciling The Wealth of Nations with The Theory of Moral Sentiments isn’t particularly difficult.”

“I think the real Adam Smith Problem is that most economists and politicians who refer to The Wealth of Nations for guidance have simply not read The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

“What does Matheson mean when he says that specialization makes us rich? This idea goes all the way back to Adam Smith. Adam Smith stated that specialization is the royal road to prosperity, because if people specialize, they can truly excel at something.”

“It drew in a classical economic ideas espoused by Adam Smith you know at one of the wealth of nations”

“Adam Smith in one book The Wealth of Nations”

“and she she said well you know what they don't tell you is that when Adam Smith was writing The Wealth of Nations the [ __ ] handbook for all capitalists and free-market guys like yourself”

“If you've been keeping up with your Freakonomics Radio feed, you've already heard an episode we made about a new oratorio by David Lang called Wealth of Nations, which was inspired by the book Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.”

“Smith had never been accused of being a fast writer, and it turned out to be 17 years between the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the release of his second and final book, The Wealth of Nations.”

“Glory Liu writes in her book that Alexander Hamilton actually cribbed bits of Adam Smith in his own report on national banks.”

“It has been said that Thatcher carried in her handbag a copy of The Wealth of Nations. One of the great debates of our time is about how much of your money should be spent by the state and how much you should keep to spend on your family.”

“If you do read Adam Smith, and you read both his books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, you might conclude there is not one Adam Smith, but two Adam Smiths.”

“As Dennis Rasmussen just explained, it is not so hard to reconcile The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith and The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith.”

“We tagged along for the world premiere of a new David Lang piece that's drawn from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.”

“um and it's it's it was amazing to see the extent to which as as late as 40 years after the publication of Adam Smith's uh Wealth of Nations most people even I mean Merchants investors you know still had not put together the implications of of capitalism and and becoming industrialism”

“so one of your characters Stringer Bell he was also taking economics courses in the wire and he had a copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations on his show”

“and the Scottish Enlightenment which after all produced uh some of the greatest ideas human beings have ever had think of Adam Smith's contribution The Wealth of Nations the theory of moral sentiments that's the kind of intellectual Legacy that I think of myself as being uh uh responsible for”

“and now let me leave you some words from Adam Smith in the wealth of nations one of the most influential philosophers and economists in our history”

“it drew in a classical economic ideas espoused by Adam Smith You know at one of the wealth of nations”

“Adam Smith the father of capitalism was also living with his mother when he wrote the Moral Sentiments man and the wealth of nations”