Words    Words    Words

Capital may be used 1. procuring rude produce, 2. manufacture commodities from rude produce, 3. transporting commodities, or 4. dividing commodities into salable proportions (retail).  Each of  these is necessary for the other, and for society as a whole.
Note: Smith does love to divide things up into categories, doesn’t he?  I suspect he studied Aristotle.
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This chapter deals with the particular characteristics of stock (capital) when it is lent at interest.  He spends some time explaining why it should be lent to those who will invest it in productive ventures, rather than to those who will spend it; but this part doesn’t interest me a great deal.
On page 292 he [...]

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This chapter deals with the accumulation of capital.  The second half of the chapter isn’t especially interesting to me, as it concerns itself with the way an individual might spend his capital (luxeries or production, and the kind of luxeries) and the effect this has on the capital of the nation.  Today, the issue is [...]

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On page 251 he discusses what happens when a bank tries to circulate more currency than what the country can employ, and how the excess is almost immediately returned.  I suspect this is another area that is no longer applicable; at least directly.
Similarly, on page 254: “What a bank can with propriety advance to a [...]

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On page 244, Smith reiterates what he said before about not counting money when reckoning wealth.  This–both his reasoning and my problems with it–are covered in my earlier posts, so there’s no point my restating them.
On page 245 he talks about the substitution of paper for gold and silver, and from there discusses the proportion [...]

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One of the reasons the study of capitalism is so difficult (and, in some ways, so much fun) is that so many of the processes are hidden.  In, for example, a feudal economy, things are pretty straightforward: peasant grows crops, gives some to landlord, eats the rest and makes most of his goods at home [...]

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On page 239 we find: “As the same guinea which pays the weekly pension of one man to-day, may pay that of another to-morrow, and that of a third the day thereafter, the amount of the metal pieces which annually circulate in any country, must alwys be of much less value than the whole money [...]

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I have found places in this book where I respectfully differ with Mr. Smith.  They fall into two categories: 1. Those things which he couldn’t have understood simply because the information wasn’t available at the time he wrote (one cannot expect advanced metallurgy from a culture which just that morning discovered iron, or or full [...]

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This chapter deals with money, and it makes my head hurt.
He begins by restating that the price of the “greater part” of commodities resolves itself into: wages of labor, profit, and rent.  His use of “greater part” here makes me wonder about the rest; unless I missed something, those are the only parts of price [...]

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I thought the chapter on rent was hard.  Heh.  The one on money is totally kicking my ass.  I’ll read it again, and maybe just get as far as the first time I go, “Huh?” and stop there and see if Smart Internet People can help me figure it out.

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