Tea at Trianon: Reading Adam Smith

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Reading Adam Smith

From American Consequences:

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith’s simple logical clarity accomplishes a number of things. By showing the method by which productivity is increased, he disproves the idea that bettering the condition of one person necessarily worsens the condition of somebody else – an idea that liberals, progressives, and Marxists refuse to let go of. Wealth is not a pizza where, if I have too many slices, you have to eat the Domino’s box. Wealth is not zero sum.

By showing that there is no set amount of wealth, Smith disproves the idea that a nation has a certain fixed horde of treasure – a king’s ransom, as it were, of gold, silver, and jewels. No, no, no, says Smith, the wealth of a nation has to be measured by its volume of trades in goods and services – by what goes on in the royal castle’s kitchens and stables, not by what’s locked in the royal vaults. In other words, it was Smith who invented the concept of gross domestic product. (And without GDP, modern economists would have nothing to say. They’d be standing around mute in ugly neckties, waiting for MSNBC to ask them to be silent on the air.)

If wealth is all ebb and flow, then so is its measure, money. Money has no intrinsic value. Any baby who’s eaten a nickel could tell you so. And those of us old enough to have lived through the Carter administration understand this perfectly well. But in the 18th century “money” was still precious metals. What Smith had to say about money bugged his contemporaries. He said that gold is, well, worth its weight in gold, definitely – but not so definitely worth anything else.

People were upset by this. Even though they could see that 18th century Spain was covered with bling and completely impoverished, so Smith was obviously right. But it was as if Smith, who had just proved that everybody could have more money, then proved that money didn’t buy happiness. And it doesn’t. It rents it. (Read more.)