It’s Not Easy, but We Can All Learn to Think like Adam Smith
To truly understand what a dynamic economy requires, we would do well to recover the 18th-century sensibility that understood dynamism as a social and cultural phenomenon as much as an economic one.
When the disciplines of economics and sociology were being invented in Britain 250 years ago, their progenitors such Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Ferguson and others were preoccupied with how vibrant commercial activity and human behavior were related. Economic dynamism was not only about economic growth, money and the division of labour, though it was that, too. It was about how and why individuals make commerce succeed.
The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, memorably wrote in his 1776 ‘Wealth of Nations’ that merchants made much better land developers than the landed gentry. Their ‘habits… of order, economy, and attention,’ cultivated in urban markets, formed the bedrock on which their profit and successful projects were built.
The languid posture of the aristocrat, in Smith’s telling, is a good picture of stagnation. Satisfied with the status quo and unable to envision how their land could produce a profit, they live uncreatively and do not recognise innovation.
Stagnation is everywhere in the news now. And with good reason. Slowing productivity, aging infrastructure, fiscal imbalances, less innovation – these and related trends make dynamism in the UK seem more like a thing of the past than the future.
Economic Dynamism
The Price of Stagnation: Britain’s Retreat from Dynamism
We face a basic issue: we do not let cities or communities grow or die.
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London and the Architecture of Creative Growth
Preserving London's creative dynamism will require humility from policymakers and a commitment to keeping the city liveable.
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The New Frontier of Capital: What SpaceX’s IPO Tells Us About American Capital Markets
The ultimate trajectory of SpaceX remains uncertain, a reflection of the inherent nature of progress at the frontier rather than a flaw in the system that produced it.
Chicago’s “Disappearing Middle Class” Can Be Found in Its Proliferating Upper Middle-Class Neighborhoods
The middle class has not been hollowed out; rather, the overall decline stems from the net movement of families upward into the upper-middle class.
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Is Economics a Failure?
Rather than ending with “economics is broken,” Alexander Rosenberg’s deliberately provocative book 'Blunt Instrument' argues that “economics is useful for a different reason than economists often say.” That is a serious and worthwhile thesis.
Locke, Meet Claude
The concern is not regulation per se. It is a regulation that outruns its justification by arriving before the evidence, foreclosing the technology before its benefits are understood, and insulating the powerful from competition that would otherwise discipline them. That is the pattern worth resisting.
