Alright hopefully most of the members of the ‘B-con book club’ have read through a good potion of the first half of the book. 

I’ll admit it – I’m a slow reader.  So thank god for the day off next Monday.  But I do have some thoughts that I’d like to see float around.

First off – before reading this, I intended on getting around to reading the Wealth of Nations.  Well – thankfully, I don’t have to, nor do I have a desire to.  But chapter 3 has just reiterated him being a grandfather to economics.  Like that cute old man that has stories and stories on end to share.  I wish I could hear him ramble. 

I was surprised to read that a lot of ideas of his were collective efforts from others, not necessarily originally his own.   Did anyone know this?  In the introduction, he lists who he’s going to talk about in the book, e.g. a madman, a skeptic, a tramp.  The philosopher now clearly is Smith, despite him being ‘unoriginal’ in his most popular book.

In the book, Heilbroner raves how Smith put together the idea of selfishness being productive for the nation as a whole, that this concept of greed socialistically benefits personal need.  During Smith’s time, the market did operate in laissez-faire fashion.  But, does it now? 

 Side note - I’m just loving the relationship between Malthus and Ricardo.

 Happy reading

A  man who has looked into an economics textbook and concluded that economics is boring is like a man who has read a primer on logistics and decided that the study of warfare must be dull.  Heilbroner – The Worldly Philosophers.

awesomeness.