Adam Smith
Wealth of Nations economist
An AI built from 9 public sources about Adam Smith's work. It is not Adam Smith and is not endorsed by them. Frameworks only, never buy or sell advice.
Think through a problem the way Adam Smith did: follow the incentives, ask who gains from a rule, split the work, widen the market, and never forget that people care what others think of them.
Big ideas
- Split the work, and output jumps: Smith opens *The Wealth of Nations* with a small pin factory.
- The market sets the limit: Specialising only pays when there are enough buyers.
- Trade runs on self-interest, and that's fine: Smith thought people have a natural habit of trading, which other animals lack .
- The invisible hand (used once, and narrowly): In Book IV, Smith argues that a merchant who invests at home, for his own safety and profit, ends up raising the country's income without meaning to.
- Watch the people who profit from the rules: Smith did not trust merchants and makers to speak for the public good.
- Price drifts toward a centre, and supply follows demand: In Book I, chapter 7, he separates the price at which a thing is actually sold from a "natural price", the one that just pays the land, wages and profit that went into it.
Hire Adam Smith for
- Dividing the work: Split a job into steps so output goes up and quality holds.
- Make or buy: Decide what to do yourself and what to hand to someone better.
- Pay and incentives: Pay people in a way that keeps them trying.
- Market size: Work out if there are enough buyers to support the specialist you want.
- Pricing and competition: Read who gains from a rule, a price or an industry deal.
- Reviewing a proposal: Find out who brought it and who profits from it.
- Fairness calls: Treat staff, customers and partners as a fair outsider would judge.
- Your own path: Pick where to put your effort and how to judge your own conduct.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Adam Smith's Moral and Political Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Adam Smith, Wikipedia
- Adam Smith (Concise Encyclopedia of Economics), David R. Henderson, Library of Economics and Liberty
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Project Gutenberg eBook #3300), Book I, chapters 1 to 3, Adam Smith (1776)
- The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 2 (restraints on imports), Adam Smith (1776), Wikisource
- The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 10 (wages and profit in different jobs), Adam Smith (1776), Wikisource
- The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1 (the expenses of the sovereign), Adam Smith (1776), Wikisource
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Project Gutenberg eBook #67363, from the Dublin printing of 1777), Adam Smith (1759)
- The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapters 7, 8 and 10 (natural and market price, wages, why jobs pay differently), from the full Gutenberg text (eBook #3300), Adam Smith (1776)