How is Wealth of Nations surprising for a modern reader? My (perhaps incorrect) intuition is that these sorts of old foundational books tend not to be too surprising because their ideas have permeated society already, which is why I’m curious to hear your take.
The biggest benefit from this book is it makes a large number of observations of the time period which is then distilled into rational first principles which can be used by others and makes it available in an easily read format.
The observations can also be correlated with subsequent changes to give us a better understanding of how things work and progressed, as well as potentially destructive changes we've made moving forward to our systems of organization.
The transition to Fiat currency, or taxation for example, I have no doubt, will eventually provoke a study and comparison as to why inflationary currencies should never be adopted, or only with severe restrictions.
There are many concepts found in the book which are correct, there are several which are also very flawed and dated. Labor Value Theorem for example has been rigorously disproven as a viable framework through Menger, Hayek, and Mises (iirc).
A society which has no education on these subjects is ill equipped to have to direct policy, or hold policy makers accountable for destructive actions (which may take years, decades, or sometimes half a century, in their cyclical actions).
The first required step to correcting a problem is in being alerted to the fact that there is a problem, and societally we've really screwed this up with the advent of social media (many:1 platforms that drown out useful signals).
Feedback systems that can no longer respond to correct stimulus are broken systems just waiting for the right circumstances for calamity.
It was eye opening to me at that point in my life as I hadn’t given too much thought to the detail in the world around me, in my own life and the economy.
It was a strange experience to read ye-olde-English that outlined observations that still apply today.
To simplify it, in my mind it was like going to the moon (boring old economics book) and discovering someone else’s flag (we beat you to it, and everything we explain is still relevant)
Someone might not expect sth like this from the "father of capitalism"
“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
> How is Wealth of Nations surprising for a modern reader?
Most people haven't read it, and tend to only reference things like "invisible hand", and skim/skip over a lot of Smith's 'moralizing'. His book before Wealth was after all The Theory of Moral Sentiments:
If you don't want to read Ye Olde English, perhaps see Glory Liu's book Adam Smith’s America:
> Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher.
She goes into the "Adam Smith Problem"; one paper on it:
> Adam Smith is best known for his economic theories that extoll the free market and individual self-interest. These ideas are the focus of Smith's second book, The Wealth of Nations. However, Smith also made large contributions to the fields of ethics and moral philosophy. Nearly 20 years prior to the publication of The Wealth of Nations, Smith first became a renowned moral philosopher when he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith outlines the nature of morality. This morality, for Smith, places an emphasis upon sympathy and compassion, which are felt by imagining the plight of others through the impartial spectator. This impartial spectator is a mode of thinking that allows for one to adjudge the actions of others in relation to society's general attitudes toward that said action. Despite Smith's consummate rumination in both books, there seems to be a disconnect between Smith's moral philosophy, found within The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his economic philosophy, found within The Wealth of Nations. How can Smith eulogize compassion and fellow feeling in one writing, while also holding that self-interest is necessary for the advancement of society in another? This disconnect is known as the Adam Smith Problem. The purpose of this project is to acknowledge the existence of The Adam Smith Problem by seeing it not as an attempt to undermine Smith's intellectual continuity, but as a challenge to reconcile the self-interested nature of humanity with higher moral standards accomplished through compassion. This reconciliation is accomplished through the notion of a liberal society in which an individual is both free to do anything that does not harm another and can expect society to maintain a higher set of moral standards through a justice system. Both wealth proliferation through self-interest and the upholding of higher values through compassion are predicates of this liberal society: the culmination of Smith's philosophy.
You don't draw too much of a distinction, but Moral Philosophy and Economics are two distinct and separable subjects. Comparing them is comparing apples to oranges.
The former lies solely within the mind and in ones own choices, where one is free to choose, whereas the latter is largely based in observation of external dynamics where continued survival is contingent upon said system.
Additionally, at the time of writing there were many observations made, and the process of boiling down to correct principles is an iterative process. What few seem to realize is Adam Smith's Labor Value Theorem was foundationally flawed (but everything else had great impact), LVT was disproven later (Subjective Value Theorem by Carl Menger iirc), but is still referenced and in use today by Marxists and other related groups.
To contradict that last wall of text, who decides what constitutes harm? What definition is being used for this? If one does not properly define what they mean, they can be right (in their head) because definitions are fluid and contradictory encompassing all possible circumstances while having absolutely no meaning.
Many people call these types of communications insanity or madness because they provide no value or benefit. These are also common talking points/structures found in Socialist and Communist propaganda which don't represent the entirety of the subject or authors, let alone in a rationally principled way.
