Rissa (rissasreading)’s Reviews > An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations > Status Update

Yo this guy was all over the idea of slavery.....

"A person who can acquire no property can have no other interest than to eat as much and work as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase him his own maintenance can be squeezed out of him by violence only"
"The pride of man makes him love to domineer; He will prefer the service of a slave over a freeman"

WHATTHEFUCKMAN

This is genuinely one of the hardest economic reads to slog through. Not because it's super smart, hard to conceive or anything of that sort. It's hard to read because Smith uses so many words and particular examples to push his narrative and he says so much but actually says very little.

This is moreso fascinating in the sense of understanding how our current capitalist beliefs came to be contrived

Guys we are so fucked today 😭 even Adam Smith believed in a living wage lowkey (even if it was just to ensure the future generation of workers)

Plus this quote really stuck out:
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy when the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable"
LOOKING @ YOU AMERICA

"Labour therefore is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities"

& My professor at university has the audacity to tell me I was wrong when saying both radical and neoclassical perspectives view the economy and market through labour 🤬

Wtf was chapter 3 💀

That was a whole lot of words to say nothing besides describing geography

"Reducing every mans business to some one simple operation, and making it the sole employment of his life, necessarily increased the dexterity of the workman"

Saying the quiet part out loud huh?