Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
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Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: Episode #2--The "Model"
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
57 minutes
3 months ago
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: Episode #2--The "Model"
Send us a text Transaction costs provide the key to understanding Adam Smith's complete philosophical system and how his two great works form an integrated whole. • Smith's two essential claims: humans desire to learn proper behavior and have an innate propensity to truck, barter, and exchange • Sympathy in Smith's view means synchronizing feelings with others—not perfect emotional matching but sufficient "concords" for social harmony • Three core principles guide proper behavior: just...
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
Send us a text We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for liberty. The story follows incentives, from primogeniture and entail to charters, free towns, and the market’s “silent and insensible” revolution. institutions as congealed preferences and elite incentiveswhy Smith’s natural order inverts in Europethe physiocrats’ growth model and Smith’s critiqueSol...
