Happy New Year! On Monday, we start tweeting about #AdamSmith 's whole #WealthOfNations at the rate of about a chapter a day! Don’t miss it! #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Wages, profits, and rents have “natural rates” regulated by the general conditions of the society in which they exist. (I.vii.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

When the price of any commodity = price of rent + profit + labor + price of getting it to market, the commodity is sold at its “natural price.” (I.vii.4–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

And that all means the commodity has been sold for what it is worth—what it really costs. (I.vii.5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

The price for which a commodity is sold ought to include a seller’s profit, because that’s how sellers pay themselves, just like they pay the wages of the laborers who work for them, who get their goods to market, etc. (I.vii.5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweet

Nerds among you may recognize the concept of economic profit here: it matters to the owners of stock whether they could have done better by using their stock elsewhere, not just whether they covered their costs. (I.vii.5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets #WeLoveNerds

It's been a whole day since we tweeted Part 2 of this chapter, so let us remind you: #AdamSmith just said that the colonies got nothing that helped them succeed from the mother country. (IV.vii.c) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

So these two opening sentences are pretty heckin’ sarcastic:
Now we've seen the great advantages the colonies got (they got nothing!) (IV.vii.c.1)
So what have been the great advantages to Europe! (IV.vii.c.2)

Seems like there’s a...tone there. #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Europeans buy goods from America, and Americans buy European goods as well. Even countries that don’t trade directly with America have benefited. (IV.vii.c.3–8) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

The mother countries restrict colonial trade (esp the exclusive right to buy from or sell to their colonies). That's a dead weight on the increase of the wealth of nations. Everything is more expensive, everyone enjoys less of it. (IV.vii.c.9) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Maybe European countries get added security? In ancient times, empires expected military support and revenue from their colonies, and they got it.
18thC colonies? Not so much. (IV.vii.c.11–13) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Everybody ready for more #WealthOfNations? Let's go!

The third sort of rude produce is the kind where human attempts to cultivate and improve it produce unpredictable results. Examples include wool and animal hides. (I.xi.m.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

It seems like the price of these should rise right along with the price of meat, but Smith says “Not so fast!” (I.xi.m.3)
#WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Because this sort of produce travels much better than meat, the market is much much larger. And we all know that more competition drives prices down. (I.xi.m.4–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

And it all gets more complicated when government gets involved, like it did in the English wool industry. (Isn’t that always the way? You should see the forms we have to fill out to get each tweet govt. approved!) (I.xi.m.8) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Today we start the last book of #AdamSmith's #WealthOfNations.

Allons-y!

#WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Book Five of #WealthOfNations is all about the duties of the sovereign and how to pay for them. In this first part of chapter 1, we’re talking about the cost of defense. (V.i.a) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

The sovereign's duty to protect the country can only be done through military force, but how you get the money to pay for that military varies according to time, place, and circumstance. (V.i.a.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

In a hunter/gatherer society, everyone is always already a warrior, and since there isn’t really a sovereign or nation, no expense is required to maintain defense. Much the same is true of shepherding cultures. (V.i.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Armies of hunters are limited in size to a few hundred men (as they have to sustain themselves through the available game). Shepherds can muster larger forces because they bring their sustenance in the form of flocks. (V.i.a.3–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

#DivisionOfLAbor, we love it! Except it *does* make it a lot harder to provide for our own wants directly. We live by exchanging and cooperating with others. (I.iv.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

#AdamSmith is too smart to think all this exchanging and cooperating got worked out easily from the very beginning. There must have been bumps in the road. (I.iv.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Butchers could have so much meat to trade with bakers/brewers that they could end up with an unusable surplus of bread/beer. That stalls trade. Smart people would work to have a supply of an always-useful trade item on hand. (I.iv.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

(We, the SmithTweeters, have never encountered a surplus of bread or beer we couldn't handle. But let’s assume Smith knows what he’s talking about.) (I.iv.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

This is how we get money, folks! We want a stable, always desirable, easily stored, and easily transportable thing we can trade for other stuff! (I.iv.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

I have just received information about a family that has locked up their child at home in isolation because she complained of some aches in her body. They suspected the child as having C19. She was tested and after a couple of days, the test came out negative. 1/n

The girl has already been in isolation for 4 days. Now they are waiting to do another PCR test today to check again because they fear that the first test was done too early and it didn't detect covid. So this little girl will remain in isolation for at least another 24 hrs. 2/n

This is idiocy. Insanity. Ignorance. Cruelty. Simply a crime against children.
The stupid fear and the stupid policies are driving parents to abuse their children. 3/n

Children are not the main source of C19 transmission.

"transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from children under 14 years of age was minimal in primary schools"

We are all products of our own environments. Our environments shape our character, our personality, our habits, our identity.

The environment that Ousmane Dembélé grew up in and the environment that FC Barcelona seeks to engulf its youngsters with could not be more different.

The Great Gatsby starts with a life lesson.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

Ousmane hasn’t had the advantages that La Masia youngsters have had. That’s why he’s Ousmane.

Like every La Masia youngster, Ousmane grew up with a dream: playing for Barça.

Like every youngster, he fought to stand out amid a talented group of players, the majority of which would fail to go pro.

However, his football education was the polar opposite to that of La Masia.

Ousmane did not reside in one of the most expensive academies in Europe: he lived in a low-cost public housing unit in Normandy. He did not play in the well-trimmed pitches of La Masia, he played in the concrete jungles of Évreux. These disadvantages made him the man he is today.

While street soccer encourages individuality & creative freedom, academy-based training like La Masia encourages unselfishness & teamwork.

That’s why Barça produce certain types of 20-year-olds like a factory line. It’s also why Barça spent €145m on a 20-year-old Ousmane.

My little Jacob Wohl story: August 2016, we're sitting around the trading turrets at my office on a bored to tears slow day. Our receptionist said someone was here for his 2pm appointment. None of us had an appointment on schedule. Who is it? we ask? Some guy named Jacob Wohl 1/

Jacob Wohl, for those out of loop, gained quite a bit of notoriety for becoming the youngest guy to ever get himself barred for life from the financial industry. Now he's waiting in our lobby to pitch something. We're a large merchant bank. 2/

Send him in, we said. In walks young Jacob asking to be seeded with $25mm to start a new hedge fund in exchange for an ownership stake in it. Oh, & he needs an office. And a Bloomberg station. And needs to borrow staff until he can hire some guys. And he needs a leased car... 3/

And he needs an answer today. Right now. Because there's a competing offer from Izzy Englander's firm Millenium (we know those guys well). We fight the urge to literally start laughing, but do ask him...hey, you the same guy who got banned by regulators? He didn't even flinch 4/

He went on about that being untrue & handed over a letter he said was from his lawyer who had confirmed he was not barred, had been vindicated but it 'just wasn't in the system yet at the SEC, CFTC'...whatever that means. 5/

Southerners wrote songs about Warrington, formed peace movements because of IRA violence - but I can’t point to any mainstream effort to oppose/understand who the glenane gang, or Shankill butchers were, care about Loughinisland, state violence, &collusion.
V selective interest

They were and are revolted by SF glorifying murder but dont know or care about the deaths of catholics here. As I’ve seen the apathy to the life my parents lived, and the fear I grew up with, I always make it understood I’m Irish but from the north. Because it’s important

Showing absolutely no interest in the murder of the people in the areas SF are elected to represent is really selectively deciding whose lives you think are worth anything. I doubt anyone south of Louth Monaghan or Cavan could tell you or care about the Reavey brothers

There was and is no hand wringing about children being shot in the fields by soldiers in front of their parents or hunted down in their own house and killed in front of their families- where were the marches, the songs, the movements?

“But Sinn Fein said this”- is of zero comfort to victims of state or loyalist violence and you are actually framing their loved ones murders in such a way that you’re almost making them partially culpable for their own fate or excusing it somehow when it’s nothing to do with SF

As many of you know, I was apart of the white evangelical tradition. I have talked about things I learned about being Black in white spaces. Now I want to say some things about what I learned about once being a Black evangelical returning back to the Black church.

A thread.

Spending years in white evangelical churches and schools, specifically from 2012-2018, shapes Black people in more ways than we would like to admit. It shapes us to diminish Blackness, devalue our people’s story, and always test what we have against the white logic and litmus.

This is particular reality for us Black men in that space. White Christians exploit our vulnerabilities, give us the room to speak, while simultaneously subverting and devaluing Black women and their struggles and their grievances. Opportunities abound for us and we take them.

We are invited into the meetings, we are given the mic, we are asked to lead groups on race, the Black church, etc. We are asked though often we actually haven’t read or thought deeply about each. We become a weapon. Profiting and policing/punishing those who get out of line.

All the while, white Christians feel good about themselves and other Black people are left to clean up the mess we’ve made, the ways we’ve made fools of Black folk, and the harmful ways we’ve learned to think, and to preach, and to be around us. It is profoundly depressing.