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
Violence and artifice control price of English wool! 1. Forbidding export 2. Duty free Spanish imports 3. Irish can only export wool to England. English wool stuck as an English (not global) product, but competes w/ Spanish and Irish wool (I.xi.m.8–9) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
Smith seems really frustrated by the lack of historical data on the price of hides. We embrace the mystery. (I.xi.m.10) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
Price of hides has definitely dropped recently, though, and this is because the tanners aren’t as good at rent-seeking as the clothiers! (I.xi.m.11) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
When prices for hides and wool drop, the price of meat rises because farmers have to cover costs of land and feed. (I.xi.m.12) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
Since the market for these goods is global, demand and supply in other countries controls price much more than whatever improvements we can make in overall wealth or producing hides and wool. (I.xi.m.14) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
Fish are tricky too, because there’s limited water that can support each type of fish, and the amount of work and $$ that goes into traveling farther to catch more fish and get them to market is enormous. (I.xi.m.15) #FishAreTricky #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
Mining is basically fishing, but more so. (I.xi.m.17–21) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
But (and remember we are still, OMG STILL, in the Digression on Silver) even if we discover whole new mines, they don’t really affect the price of money. They only affect trifling superfluities like how much gold and silverplate there is.(I.xi.m.21) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
If you mail us a silverplated tea set we, the SmithTweeters, hereby promise not to call it a trifling superfluity. Just saying. (I.xi.m.21) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

More from @AdamSmithWorks

OK. Chapter 7 of Book 4 of #WealthOfNations is tough going. It's long. It's serious. It's all about colonies.

We can take comfort, though, in knowing that the chapter #AdamSmith says is about colonies is, in fact, about colonies. (IV.vii) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Colonies were a vexed subject when #AdamSmith was writing, and they’re even more complicated now. So, before we even get to the tweeting, here’s a link to that thread on Smith and “savage nations.” (IV.vii) #WealthOfTweets


The reason for the ancient Greeks and Romans to settle colonies was straightforward: they didn’t have enough space for their growing populations. Their colonies were treated as “emancipated children”—connected but independent. (IV.vii.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

(Both these things are in contrast to the European colonies, as we'll see.) (IV.vii.a.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Ancient Greeks and Romans needed more space because the land was owned by an increasingly small number of citizens and farming and nearly all trades and arts were performed by slaves. It was hard for a poor freeman to improve his life. (IV.vii.a.3) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

More from Society

global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R

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