"So, Mom. What's 'the invisible hand'?"
"A bullshit rationalization for letting corporations kill the planet. Now finish your Pop-Tart."
I like to think that Smith was just a really naive optimist who somehow couldn't imagine irrationally self-defeating economically rapacious behavior, even though he should have been aware enough to observe the birth of incredibly dangerous financial tools during his own lifetime. La-la!
It's also the name of a local band. I suppose I could send LB a CD if she wants to further muddy the waters.
I haven't read Smith since first-year Soc class (and probably didn't read him very well then), but I've had the impression this is one of those cases where the received version of what someone said turns out to be much less nuanced than the real thing. Was Smith really that naive?
Smith wasn't all that naive about, e.g., the potential for the formation of cartels. And there really is something worth understanding about the self-organizing functioning of markets; I had to explain the concept before going straigh into debunking market triumphalism.
My kid just keeps asking about death.
Conversations like this one were one of the hardest parts about fostering teens. I'm okay with talking sex, probably more than they wanted me to be, but explaining why I absolutely don't want to own Walmart shares without making it sound like the Walmart-stock-evangelist former foster parent is history's greatest monster was extremely difficult for me.
Age 11 is just way too early to ask about that. Bravo that her school has introduced it, but it's kind of complicated, no? She needs a lot of prep before she would get it. No?
Not to pile on, but Adam Smith was really truly not naive about both the possibility and probability of rapacious behavior.
Also, for those keeping score at home, I am feeling better and the Pad Thai hasn't killed me yet, though it sent me home from work.
7: Wait, teens talk about what companies you should own shares in?
Jesus christ. I should probably just check out of the 21st century.
No, like many others, he wasn't naive about his topic--you're right--but he was naive, I think, about how it would become the central screaming argument of assholes.
The problem with free market triumphalism is:
a) ascribing moral value to them
b) seeing them as a solution for everything
b-1) misunderstanding that actors will respond to market incentives regardless of whether or not those are socially beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
b-2)the incentives depend on the rules set by the government
b-3)one of the most effective ways of making money is to get the government to help you out to game the system.
Other than that they are a pretty nifty bit of social organization that can work very well both in certain areas (e.g. consumer goods) and more broadly to underpin a robust welfare state with inequality held in check - see, e.g. developed nations in the quarter century after WWII. Attempting to kill them off hasn't worked out well in any economy.
Uh, 13 was to 11 and really should have just been struck from the record anyhow.
I absolutely don't want to own Walmart shares
Why? I can understand boycotting them, but I don't understand how owning or not owning their shares makes a difference.
10: In my somewhat limited experience, the teens we deal with have tried to impress us with their knowledge of various things they don't actually know very well, which is sweet but also difficult to respond to properly. I mean, hey, props for learning about the history of race relations in America and especially in Lee's home state so you can show you care, but can I fact-check you a little? It's a tough balance!
This is probably true of all kids, but the specific combination of huge gaps in education thanks to too many school moves and the desperation to please us seem specific to the foster teen/new potential adoptive parent dynamic.
preparing kids for responsible adulthood
Because, of course, this is a country governed by and for responsible adults.
Adam Smith was really truly not naive about both the possibility and probability of rapacious behavior.
Yes, I know. But it's been a couple of centuries since Adam Smith had anything to say about the invisible hand. The concept has devolved.
I think my 2 still isn't wrong; Smith did not, I think, imagine economic actors behaving perversely against their own self-interest in ways that also fuck everyone, for no reason other than "well, everyone else is doing it so I thought that was a thing." Is that in Smith somewhere that I missed?
15: I don't own any direct shares of any corporation and if I did, I imagine it would be a corporation that matched my values better than Walmart does. I don't want to feel complicit in Walmart's bad decisions, nor do I think I would have a significant chance to push for change even if I did own shares. It was hard to explain this without saying, "Not only am I a lesbian, but I'm a commie atheist too!" when I'd been couching that in gentler terms.
And I didn't want to argue with him about whether it was realistic that his foster dad was making the kind of money Colton claims he was making by day-trading, essentially. But Colton seemed to think that I was just throwing away free money by not investing, and I had a hard time responding to that in a polite way other than by saying that I wasn't interested and was happy with the life I'd chosen instead.
Attempting to kill them off hasn't worked out well in any economy.
I think any phenomenon relating to the concept of "owning shares" is very much 20th- and not 21st-century.
If you're aspiration is that the median standard of living should be that of a fairly prosperous 1920's American factory worker, with similar working conditions, but with universal healthcare and more vacation time, then yes, it works.
Let me say that the setup and twist for this post was very well executed. I did LOL.
11 is not too young to start understanding the reification of social relations into a hegemonic ideology.
And to see movie that realistically portray violence a bit.
24: It's downright painful, is what it is. But yes, well done.
19 I'm not sure exactly what you're etting at, so I'm not sure we're disagreeing, but Smith had an entire theory of speculative bubbles and a concept of "overtrading" that consisted of people basically extending credit against self-interest because it was the thing to do.
And he opposed, for example, joint stock companies because be assumed that management would steal from imvestors, who might invest in a frenzy a la the South Seas Bubble.
And to see movie that realistically portray violence a bit.
Word. Just because I couldn't find a babysitter doesn't mean I'm not going to see No Country For Old Men.
Why? I can understand boycotting them, but I don't understand how owning or not owning their shares makes a difference.
Wait, what? Owning shares doesn't somehow seem like supporting the business to you?
xtrapnel and PGD would be also able to add value, if we're going to talk about Smith.
"Sometimes when a buyer and a seller love each other very much..."
22: Technically I own shares in a corporation rather than owning my apartment! I try not to think about it!
Hey, Dallas is doing some shit very well.
30: teraz can obviously speak for himself, but I assume the idea is that if you don't own the shares, someone else will, so your refusal to own the shares doesn't harm or punish the company in any way, so it might as well be you who owns shares and makes the money.
At least, I think this is a pretty common train of thought among investors.
How would that not apply to buying the actual product? Merely because stocks are limited?
And also, driving up stock prices helps the business.
OT: Weird people ride the bus at night.
Well, and unless you're participating in an IPO, the money you spend on the shares doesn't go to the company; it's more like taking a side bet on its success or failure. On the other hand, if you're rooting for WM share prices to rise, you're rooting for WM to do well and it's psychologically difficult for some to profit from the succcess of evil.
Also, by exercising demoand for the shares, you are indirectly (and in an incredibly miniscule way) bolstering the compensation to WM's top executives (through options packages and the like) and the Walton family, but it's the profiting from evil that's the problem; I don't bet on the Celtics or Giants for similar reasons.
Can't believe no one's linked the Fry and Laurie sketch with market forces as Father Christmas yet.
Be the link you want to see in the world.
Public transit rocks. Twelve minutes ago I was drunk in a bar wondering how sweaty I'd be by the time I got home. But a bus came and I sat in air conditioned comfort and watched a 61 year old man hit on a twenty something woman and now I'm home.
In Wealth of Nations, when Adam Smith used the phrase "invisible hand" - he only used it once in that book - he was talking about how people with money would invest it in their own country rather than in a foreign country, even though investing it in a foreign country might earn a higher return.
His use of the phrase was a nod to the patriotism or nationalism that prevailed at that time. He was saying that our social consciences would outweigh our profit motives.
You should use the phrase to teach your child history and the techniques of propaganda, not economics. The way people use the phrase now is diametrically opposed to the way Adam Smith used it in Wealth of Nations.
Hooray for Duff Clarity, whoever s/he is.
And now it's raining. I would have been wet if it wasn't for the Port Authority and its friendly bus guy.
Duff Clarity isn't as deserving of praise as the bus guy who drove me home before the rain.
That was me, Moby, you insensitive clod.
Don't surf while you drive the bus.
People lives depend on you. Except everybody got off at my stop, so I guess go ahead.
A friend wrote a story in which a statue to the invisible hand had been erected in a public park. You could discern its location by the corpses of unsuspecting birds strewn around its base.
it's more like taking a side bet on its success or failure. On the other hand, if you're rooting for WM share prices to rise, you're rooting for WM to do well and it's psychologically difficult for some to profit from the succcess of evil.
It's more like helping cause their stock price to rise, which makes the company worth more, and able to take out bigger loans and expand and grow into a bigger company.
51: Wouldn't it be cheaper just to get a Big Gulp and let the ants make it visible?
In fact, in no way is buying a company's stock like betting that the company will fail. It's not like Thorn was saying she had an issue with short selling Walmart stock.
Roughly what Halford said, minus any compunctions about profiting from evil. As long as I'm not contributing, then so what. [banned analogy] Not that I actually have any money to invest, but theoretically.
And go Mavs, down with anything associated with Pat Riley.
Okay, then my responses to Halford's comment count as my responses to 55.
In the end the success of the company depends on their ability to make a profit. Expanding isn't going to help if they don't have customers, quite the opposite.
42: I have a tragically narrowed theory of change due to lacking a device that can play videos or copy-paste links at the moment.
People assess the health of a company based on its stock all the time, and make favorable or unfavorable deals according to the climate of their company. You do need to bring in customers. But that's not the end-all be-all of making a profit.
OT: Super 8 felt precisely thirty minutes longer than it is. On the other hand, those extra thirty perceived minutes were nicely air-conditioned.
In unrelated news, when people who came of age in the late '70s and early '80s start running for president, I shall move to the place where Skylab fell and set up as "that crazy American fella. Some say he were driven mad by campaign advertisements with home movies of the President in a Six Million Dollar Man baseball shirt, he was, but I say -- g'day to ye, gentlemen."
And go Mavs, down with anything associated with Pat Riley.
I recall hearing about "talents" being "taken" somewhere. Did they miss the team plane to Dallas?
I'm rooting for the Mavs like the rest of America outside Miami, because I always root for the West when the Lakers are out. But I have a visceral hatred of sports fandom bSed on what middle class white guys from cold cities (aka the only "real" sports fans) claim to want.
Also, Heebie's responses here are . . . not smart. But I somehow don't feel like arguing about this. Basically, companies (and especially a place like WM) finance new projects through retained earnings.
Well, that's true. But I'm insanely good looking.
actually i don't know if any topology is part of a math degree.
But unable to explain to me how, if a company's stock goes up, it doesn't benefit the company?
Topology is part of my math degree.
the important thing to realize about corporations is that noone really controls them, but management and owners mostly do alright by each other.
Well, it benefits the corporation's owners, who are the shareholders, who now own a more valuable asset, and its executives, to the extent they have compensation contingent on share price. If you're worried about the success of the corporation per se, though, it's a different story; your demand for WalMart shares isn't driving the success of the entity. Or, what 70 says.
Lots of the upper management in a company will likely profit if the stock price rises, which may be even more like ashes on the heads of the righteous, if it's an evil company .
IIRC Smith thought the free market was a good alternative to the aristocracy, and so do I. Smith was looking forward, though.
63, 68: The existence of a secondary market for a given type of company sends venture capitalists and entrepreneurs the signal that those are the kinds of company to start if you want to make money on the IPO. For companies that (for whatever reason, maybe they're in financial trouble) need to raise capital but don't want to do it through debt, buying or holding stock makes it easier for them to raise capital by selling new shares of stock.
The first effect I just mentioned is probably a very weak signal when we're talking about something as specific as stock in a single company, and the second rarely matters in practice because most companies most of the time are not selling stock to raise capital.
Perhaps more relevant is that a higher stock price makes a hostile takeover more difficult and less profitable. Which means it increases the probability that things will keep on going the way they were before.
So you're saying: once the shares are sold off, they're just bought and sold from third parties, which doesn't benefit the company.
That makes basic sense, but then why are executives so obsessed with pleasing the shareholders, at the expense of their companies well-being? Just as an indirect route to line their own shareholding pockets?
Why did anyone think 2 was objectionable? AWB didn't make a claim about the actual Adam Smith, she just told us what she'd like to think. She's entitled to like to think anything she wants, so long as she doesn't falsely assert its truth.
But seriously, my head starts steaming when people talk about the opinions of the fictional economist "Adam Smith," as if they were the opinions of the actual moral philosopher named Adam Smith. The real Adam Smith was a liberal then, and would be recognizably liberal now.
Also, Theory of Moral Sentiments is awesome.
Well, theoretically, the corporation very much should be trying to benefit its shareholders --it's a moneymaking enterprise whose purpose is to make money for its owners, not management, and management has a duty to act in the shareholders' interest. All I (we) are saying is that in most cases you're not actually financing the corporation by becoming a shareholder; you're just an owner taking a bet on management to usefully represent your interests.
75: I think a lot of that is just ideology they learn in business school. It's not actually possible to organize most firms without some kind of governing principles, and it's no longer popular to just try to provide a good service for a fair price and treat people decently. But all their finance and econ courses all contended - or (which is more effective) all simply assumed - that corporate decisions are to be judged by the sole criterion of maximizing shareholder value.
Also, CEOs and board members often have lots of options or stock in the company.
It's really quite remarkable that for all their work, the modern economists have still not succeeded in producing homo economicus, but only in substituting one ideology for another.
75.2 : not uncommon for management to get bonuses if the stock goes up. Even the Economist thinks this should be divided by the rise for the industry in general.
Also, in some fields, booming stock is an ad for your product.
Okay, fine. Subdividing and rearranging something called "Owner" may not have an impact on the company.
I still think it's nutty to boycott a company and simultaneously own its stock.
I wonder, if you go down to the Duff plant, will it turn out that Duff Clarity, Duff Perspicacity, and Duff Dry Wit all come out of the same pipeline?
Wow, just finished the game on the DVR. What a series.
But man, preparing kids for responsible adulthood can just jump out at you from nowhere -- this wasn't really a talk I was prepped for over breakfast this morning.
I would suggest she read "The Wealth of Nations".
76
... and would be recognizably liberal now
I don't think so.
The real Adam Smith was a liberal then, and would be recognizably liberal now.
He was recognisably liberal then, and if he was around for twenty-five years now he'd very likely adopt recognisably liberal positions. If he was suddenly teleported into the present day he'd appear to be a crazy (but vaguely likeable) old troll whose opinions had apparently been formed 250 years ago. Because he would be.
But unable to explain to me how, if a company's stock goes up, it doesn't benefit the company?
It does benefit them a bit. A company always has the *option* (which as Rob correctly says, they don't actually often use) of issuing some new shares to finance some new evil. The higher the share price, the more evil they can finance for a given issue of shares (or more likely, they can finance the same evil project while giving away less of the company).
Also, there are non-trivial marketing benefits. If the stock is going up, everyone in the same or related industry thinks you're doing well and are a good company, so you will find more good people wanting to work for you and do business with you; there's a halo effect. This can actually be very important indeed for banks (where a plummeting share price can trigger a run) but it exists to a greater or lesser extent across the market.
However ...
why are executives so obsessed with pleasing the shareholders, at the expense of their companies well-being? Just as an indirect route to line their own shareholding pockets?
yep. As JK Galbraith said in a different context, but also about economics "some things are so simple that they repel the mind".
pleasing the shareholders, at the expense of their companies well-being
I read somewhere that in the United States they're legally obliged to act like this, but it can't be that stupid.
re: 85
Well, he was in favour of progressive taxation, and in favour of public funding for things from taxation. He wasn't a libertarian capitalist of the vulgar stripe, certainly.
And other than that, what chris said in 86. He was an 18th century Scot, not a 21st century one.
I wonder, if you go down to the Duff plant, will it turn out that Duff Clarity, Duff Perspicacity, and Duff Dry Wit all come out of the same pipeline?
No. It won't turn out like that.
Duff Clarity's blog, which falls into the category of Commonplace Book, is very entertaining. Have a fruit basket.
In an era where we have 9% unemployment, what we need is to lay more people off. Good thinking there, Sparky.
like many others, he wasn't naive about his topic--you're right--but he was naive, I think, about how it would become the central screaming argument of assholes.
Sorta like Darwin Jesus.
93 was me, and I posted it in the wrong thread. So apparently I'm doing everything wrong today.
89, 90: My counterfactual was underspecified. Obviously if you literally took him a time machine and dropped him off in a voting booth, he wouldn't be liberal, he'd just be confused. But if you had to place him, even with his 18th century opinions, on the partisan spectrum today, it seems to me that in the US at least, he would be distinctly left of center.
I don't know where he'd fall in other, relatively left-leaning countries.
There is only one set of facts. So at least among honest and sane thinkers (admittedly a small subset, though I do think Smith is in this group), differences in political valence come from differences in emphasis. Smith finds material progress interesting, finds the exploitation of the public by the wealthy and well-connected to be a salient part of economic life, and worries about alienation due to specialization of labor. All three of those things seem to me to be quite usual liberal concerns (though not always exclusively).
Things Smith did not find so interesting: religion in public life, national glory through military conquest, defending as absolutes the privileges of the already-rich.
I haven't heard many people using Adam Smith's name as a metonym for that last cause lately, but it was in vogue for a while.
Yeah, to the extent that I'm familiar with Smith's work [not much, although I'm familiar with much of his Scottish contemporaries' work] that seems fairly unobjectionable.
It's a fact that in the middle of the last century, before the new right took off, Smith was claimed as a precursor of Marx as much as he was of modern capitalism.
It's all down to which cherries you pick.
Unfogged needs this, I think.
Note that they can apparently hire a relatively competent web designer...but they can't get the Pastor Swank out of their prose.
100. Ha! Blocked at work: Intolerance and Hate.
I haven't read Wealth of Nations -- a lot of it's about pins, isn't it? -- but I've always assumed that that "invisible hand" was a useful metaphor for a counter-intuitive local effect observable in actual markets (i.e. street markets or streets full of similar shops), not an Iron Social Law That You Break At Your Peril. Marx had high regard for him, even though (obviously) he disagreed with him.
87
... A company always has the *option* (which as Rob correctly says, they don't actually often use) of issuing some new shares to finance some new evil. ...
Actually companies issue new shares to use to purchase things (mainly other companies) fairly often. The higher their share price the easier it is for them to buy other companies (and the harder it is for other companies to buy them).
103. As Duff Clarity points out upthread, the way Smith uses the term in TWON hasn't got much to do with markets at all, but is more about cultural predispositions.
89
Well, he was in favour of progressive taxation, and in favour of public funding for things from taxation ...
Well so am I but that doesn't make me a liberal. Lots of people agree with liberals on some issues without being liberals.
I expect you are using 'liberal' in the American sense, not the sense used by everybody else, and by people who were alive at the same time as Smith.
104: Can you point to some numbers on how often acquisitions are funded via equity vs debt issuance vs retained earnings?
Adam Smith was the guy who won American Idol, right? He's the BEST!
So I went and looked up the context for the "invisible hand" phrase, and I really don't think it's meant to refer primarily or exclusively to the preference for domestic trade:
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
That seems pretty close to the folk account of the invisible hand.
In other news, a relevant philolsopher.
106,107:Well, I think Smith was a liberal, in both senses of the word, since I believe current "liberals" are "conservatives."
Smith was of course religious, and is one of the early thinkers who tried to make the "real" or natural" world a clockwork transcendental mechanism, like cheap Darwinism (Spencer). The Deism of a silent maintenance engineer.
Natural or "human" rights, progress, liberal processes creating positive outcomes almost automatically, natural law, and free market economics (general equilibrium) are all mere extensions of medieval superstition and genuflecting to nobodaddy.
Smith => Walras => Cochrane & Lucas and depression and inequality. This is liberalism, and I wish "liberals" would just quit trying to deny their superstitious roots and become socialists. The mixed economy is about human sacrifices to long dead gods.
105
As Duff Clarity points out upthread, the way Smith uses the term in TWON hasn't got much to do with markets at all, but is more about cultural predispositions.
I don't think this is right. The actual quote (IV.2.9) is:
But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
is part of an extended argument for free trade and is definitely about markets.
The word in Smith's day was "Providence" and however he may have tried to disguise it to get through to French atheists and English empiricists Smith believed it would all work out okay according to God's will.
Yes, I've always associated it with the phenomenon of competitive pricing within a market, where pursuit of self-interest, which you'd (naively) expect to drive prices up, actually drives them down. Absent cartelisation of course. I'm mildly surprised that it actually appears in a different section -- perhaps more surprised than I should be, since I haven't read any of the book -- but not surprised that it's been converted from an interesting and effective metaphor about the respective counterintuitive natures of individual, social and collective behaviour in certain empirical conditions, and turned into a neoclassical and/or Randian shibboleth. Judging by what I know -- also unread! -- of his other great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he'd have considered Ayn Rand a dangerous criminal lunatic.
If the stock is going up, everyone in the same or related industry thinks you're doing well and are a good company, so you will find more good people wanting to work for you and do business with you; there's a halo effect. This can actually be very important indeed for banks (where a plummeting share price can trigger a run) but it exists to a greater or lesser extent across the market.
This is a more better said version of what I was trying to say, above. That I got called NOT SMART for.
Don't take it personally, heebie. Nobody expects you to understand nuclear throw weights.
Smith was writing an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, not the Wealth of the Global Economy. He was illustrating specifically the point that a cultural choice to invest in domestic industry promoted the domestic economy as well as the investor's private interests.
"Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it." implies to me that he feels it frequently might be. But I suspect he wasn't all that interested in this side of things because imperialism in the Helphand/Lenin sense didn't really exist yet.
Trying to think about what's good for a corporation is a category error. You may as well ask whether it's good for a hamburger to be especially tasty. The tastiness of a hamburger benefits the seller who can chage more, the consumer who enjoys the taste, and has subsidiary benefits for the employees of and the lender to the seller. But the hamburger itself is either indifferent to how tasty it is, or would be better off tasting lousy because then it would live a longer hamburger life before being consumed.
I ban myself.
118
... He was illustrating specifically the point that a cultural choice to invest in domestic industry ...
He wasn't presenting this as a cultural choice but as a prudent response to the greater risks of foreign investment.
Trying to think about what's good for a corporation is a category error.
Ok, good s/b profitable.
43: I had an identical experience on Tuesday night, except it was a party, not a bar.
In the short run, there's all kinds of stock market effects. In the long run, Walmart stock price is going to be determined by how much money they make. If liberals think that somehow they're going to be able to manipulate Walmart's stock price to change the company's behavior, they're high.
And you can't blame Halford for calling you NOT SMART. This is a man who's gone months without eating a single doughnut, brownie, or piece of cake. At this point, at work he probably just stands up in court and shouts "Shut the fuck up, you stupid motherfucker!"
. . . But one more thing before I ban myself. I figured it mighet be easier for Lizardbreath to explain to her daughter the urbandictionary.com meaning of invisible hand. Then I looked it up:
A self-gratification move where you sit on your hand till it falls asleep and the proced to masturbate. This gives the illusion that someone else is doing it or that an invisible hand is doing it.
DUDE!!!! last night i gave myself the invisible hand....it was sooooo awesome.
I couldn't figure out how this would work. If anyone has done this, or is in a position to try it now, please report.
I couldn't figure out how this would work.
It's certainly no Dutch Rudder.
If your hand falls asleep, it does become invisible.
I couldn't figure out how this would work.
I always say that what spoils masturbation is the sensation in your hand. You get so preoccupied with the physical sensation of your fingers. If it could only be replaced with pins and needles it would be like there is a second person present and you're having sex with them.
what spoils masturbation is
...all those intolerant prudes at the gym.
You get so preoccupied with the physical sensation of your fingers.
This is not really my experience.
what spoils masturbation is
...your mom.
131. Don't you know that it's different for girls.
I'm only piping in to stop the obvious joke from being made.
I'm here as well! Been here all along! You noticed me, right? Hello?!
I'm confused. Who are you people?
He wasn't presenting this as a cultural choice but as a prudent response to the greater risks of foreign investment.
This is not evident in the passage you quoted, and I'm too lazy to look it up. Can you support this statement?
You know what ruins masturbation? These motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!
NMM to most of the Cherokee nation, with Invisible Hand or without.
I am not starting World War Three for you, General Clark. Don't be a wanker.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
I can haz a zombie Rocky sequel?
People of unfogged seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the White Man, or in some contrivance to distress mcmanus.
139
This is not evident in the passage you quoted, and I'm too lazy to look it up. Can you support this statement?
The following appears just a bit above the previously quoted paragraph IV.2.6
Thus, upon equal or nearly equal profits, every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home-trade to the foreign trade of consumption, and the foreign trade of consumption to the carrying trade. In the home-trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption. He can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress. ...
Note the stipulation of reasonably comparable profits.
Though it seems to be of excessively ancient vintage to show up online anywhere, there was a hilarious satire by Samuel Brittan called "Could Adam Smith Get a Research Grant?" that took the form of a rejection letter from a granting agency for a research proposal to write TWON.
Among other grounds cited for rejecting the grant application was the dubious provenance of the pin production data ("Just where is this pin factory?"), the empirical foundation upon which the whole argument rested.
Memory may be tricking me here, but I believe I first encountered this article taped to the door of Brad Delong's office.
The actual non-anachronistic name of Smith's politics, incidentally, was presumably WHIG.
The actual non-anachronistic name of Smith's politics, incidentally, was presumably WHIG.
True, but then pretty much nobody actually admitted to being a Tory between 1746 and the death of the younger Pitt. You could be a Court Whig or a Country Whig or Pittite Whig or a Rockingham Whig or whatever, but God forbid you should be one of those crazy Jacobite Tories. So it didn't mean a lot.
Goddam. Apropos of the first, fakeout paragraph of the OP, I'm starting to run into a category of problem earlier than I expected. Abigail Jr., eleven, but tall for her age, and fairly serious and mature-sounding in her speech patterns, came home from a school trip with a funny story -- the teacher let them browse in the gift shop at the museum, and she went off to a back room filled with art books, while the other kids were fooling around with music boxes. And while she was leafing through the books, she got into a pleasant conversation about Michelangelo with this guy. They chatted for a bit, and then something in the conversation made it clear that she was one of the kids from the school group in the other room, and he boggled a bit and wandered off hastily.
Jesus fucking Christ, she's eleven. I don't care if she's five foot six, shouldn't a grown man be able to tell that the girl he's chatting up is eleven? Nothing untoward or upsetting happened or anything, and I gave her a talk about how that's probably a category of mistake that people will make again in the future, and if she's ever interacting with someone and starts to believe they think she's an adult, she should bring the interaction to a close while making her age clear.
But fuck. She doesn't look like an adult, she looks like a tall eleven-year old. I'd believe someone might honestly think she was fifteen or so, but then what was the dude doing chatting up a fifteen-year-old?
Yipes, Abby, that's scary.
She's probably going to need a lot of coaching for these situations--how to look for warning signs, that sort of thing.
Also maybe a t-shirt that says "Bug off, perv, I'm eleven."
My oldest is only 8, so I've got some time before I have to deal with this, but I'm really not sure I know what advice to give.
need a lot of coaching
I'm sort of boggling on how to do this without scaring her too much. What I'm actually thinking, "Huh, looks like you've grown into the age-bracket where many, many more men, rather than just a vanishingly small number of pedophiles, will be interested in sexually harassing or raping you," is overly terrifying.
Would she have considered an 16-18 year old to be an adult? Just trying to take the creepy out of it a bit.
Not impossible -- that it might have been a seventeen-year-old chatting up what he thought was a fifteen-year-old -- and I was hoping that was it. But given the location, it seemed more likely that it was a real grownup.
What does A. Junior think about it? Is it cool to have an adult think she's an adult? Or weird? Or creepy?
This started happing to me at about 11 or 12. My solution was dorky, baggy clothing.
155: It was a non-upsetting peculiar incident. I'm fairly sure she didn't grasp that the guy was talking to her because he thought she was attractive, she thought it was a friendly conversation with a person who mistook her for an adult.
Actually, I think it's time to have the conversation about older boys -- that sometime in the fairly near future, she's going to be romantically interested in boys (or girls, whichever, but probably boys), and that's fine and good and I approve, but stick to your own age. No dating older for quite a while yet.
dorky, baggy clothing.
She's largely there already -- she's not a tidy or an overly fashionable child. But I've got to say that I had similar stuff happen from twelve or so on, and dressing hopelessly dorky didn't really help. I've actually wondered if it hurt: that a primped-up, fashiony fourteen-year-old looks her age because she's got fourteen-year-old taste, while the same girl in a baggy t-shirt and no makeup has fewer age clues.
@142: you didn't do so well with that Iraq thing, though...perhaps you shouldn't have had the plastic surgery.