Category: Economics

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. All right. So published in 1776 in the same year as Declaration of Independence, the Wealth of Nations has had an equally great impact on the course of modern history. Adam Smith’s celebrated defense of free market economics was written with such expression, power, and clarity that the first edition sold out in six months. While its most remarkable and enduring innovation was to see the whole of economic life as a unified system, it is notable also as one of the enlightenment’s most eloquent testaments to sanctity of the individual and his relation to the state.

All right. So book one, book two, three, four. We’ll go Of Division of Stock, Of Money Considered as a particular Branch of the General Stock of the Society, or of the Expense of Maintaining the National Capital, Of Profits of Stock. This book right here is a very important book if you wanted to get into economics or understand capitalism as a whole.

Here we go. This is completely different than what most people would want to talk about in here, but to me, it’s interesting. We’re going to talk about, Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns after the Fall of the Roman Empire. All right. Or Of the Different Employment of Capitals. Ah, man. Those are both interesting. 320, that’s employment of capitals. Yeah, employments.

All right. I don’t want to go… Well, we got two of them right here. I mean, they’re both really interesting, so I’m going to try to steal just a little bit from each. I don’t know which one to talk about. We’ve got the Different Employment of Capitals and the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns after the Fall of the Roman Empire. So we’ll just read the first couple of paragraphs because I’m going to end up taking up too much time, and I don’t want to.

“The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall the Roman Empire, not more favored than those of the country.” When he’s talking about the country, he’s talking about the boonies or farms and things. “They consisted indeed a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient Republics of Greece in Italy. These lasts were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands among whom the public territory was originally divided and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighborhood of one another and to surround them with a wall for the sake of common defense.

“After the fall of the Roman Empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem genuinely to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, in the midst of their own tenants and dependents. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesman and mechanics who seem, in those days, to have been of servile of very nearly of servile condition. Their privileges, which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principle towns in Europe, sufficiently show…”

“Their own…” Wait. Whoa, I was going to stop reading until I read something that was interesting. Okay. When we’re talking about, “Europe specifically show that they were before those grants. The people to whom it was granted as a privilege that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether or nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country.”

So are they saying that the privileges which we find granted by ancient characters to some of the towns in Europe sufficiently show that there would before these grants… They returned usually paid to protectors who are and/or a poll tax. So yeah, basically what it’s saying is when they’re building the cities… Oh, wow. Some [inaudible 00:06:25] Moors. Yeah. I want to read this just because it was talking about the Moors. I’m interested about the Moors because Moors were black people at least in Spain. I was there. I seen pictures. I don’t care what the area tells you. I’ve seen it for myself.

Yeah. We’re already at six minutes. So this is what we’re going to be talking about, Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns after the Fall of the Roman Empire. What I will be doing… Oh, it’s not that long. It’s 10 pages. I’m only trying to come up with 400 words. So yeah, this would be enough to go with, talk about what the rise and fall of cities. If I feel so inclined, I will add part of the other one into it. All right. We are done with box number four. I’m going to go do a couple of things, but you won’t know. And I’ll see you on the beginning of box number five.