Month: April 2009

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

I’m going to need to take notes as I read this, so I figured I may as well do it here as anywhere else–especially because doing it here gives Smart People a chance to point out where I’m being stupid.

I’m using the Bantom Dell paperback edition, March 2003, edited and annotated by Doug Fraser, ISBM 0-553-58597-5

Introduction: The title is The Wealth of Nations.  Later, I may have some thoughts about wealth, but what intrigues me right away is that in the very title  he makes reference to nations–that is, to a very specific organization of the State, and one closely associated with the economy of commodity-exchange, as opposed to, for example, the Kingdom, the City-State, the Tribe, &c.  I wonder, therefore, to what degree his intention is to talk about general economic laws, and to what extent he intends to limit his discussion to the specifics of a market economy.

In the introuction itself, the first sentence reads as follows: “The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies with all the necessaries and conveniences of life.”  So then, what would later come to be called the Labor Theory of Value, appears here as a given.  Is he going to establish this later, or is it merely assumed?

In the second paragraph, he is already entering into a discussion of the productivity of labor–in other words, he is setting aside (at least for the moment) the material wealth with which a given region is endowed, and instead concentrating on the degree to which labor can multiply that wealth.  To my mind, this seems perfectly reasonable.

He returns to this with more force on page 3, although I’ve now run into the term “capital stock” in the sentence, “The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is every where in propotion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed.”  I think I’m going to have a real problem if I can’t figure out what he means by “capital stock.”  Raw material?  Capital in the sense of wealth for investment?  Hope I figure it out.

Later on page 3 he makes the interesting point that Europe has concentrated (since the fall of the Roman Empire) on industry of the town as opposed to industry of the country.  Here he refers to it as a matter of “policy,” which seems arbitrary absent discussion of the material causes of that policy, but I trust he’ll expand on that later.

On to Book One

Turkey Dilemma, or, Is There More To Life Than Sandwiches?

Thanks to Reesa’s mother, Mad Gastronomer, and Alton Brown, I can now consistantly get a turkey roasted the way I like it.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately.  Roast turkey for a day, then turkey sandwitches for a week, by which time the soup is ready.

My question: It seems like there should be something fun to do with all of that roast turkey meat that I’ve just been using for sandwitches.  Suggestions?

Great moments in literature

1. In This Immortal, by Zelazny, when Conrad says, “Feathers or Lead?”

2. In Twenty Years After, by Dumas, when M. de Beaufort removes the poniard from the pie and says, “I hold one of these poniards to La Remee’s heart and say to him, ‘My friend, I am truly distressed, but if you make any movement or utter a cry, you are a dead man.'”

It’s things like that, those catch-your-breath instants, that are what I live for–why I say I’ll do anything for a good scene.  A long, slow build-up, and a payoff that makes the brain explode.

So–can you think of moments like that, lines that are the culmination of a scene that make your heart skip a beat?  (And, just so no one thinks I’m fishing for compliments, let us exclude any that I might be responsible for).