Podcasts about adam smith's the wealth

In this episode, I discuss the fifth--and final--book of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." If you want to support me, you can do that with these links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy paypal.me/theoryphilosophy Twitter: @DavidGuignion IG: @theory_and_philosophy

In this episode, I discuss book 4 of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." If you want to support me, you can do that with these links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy ​ paypal.me/theoryphilosophy Twitter: @DavidGuignion IG: @theory_and_philosophy

In this episode, I discuss books 2 and 3 of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." If you want to support me, you can do that with these links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy paypal.me/theoryphilosophy Twitter: @DavidGuignion IG: @theory_and_philosophy

In this episode, I begin my presentation of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." This episode covers the first book of the volume. If you want to support me, you can do that with these links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy ​ paypal.me/theoryphilosophy Twitter: @DavidGuignion IG: @theory_and_philosophy

Ian Reynolds is a Partner and Chief Solutions Architect at Zibtek, a software development firm focused on helping businesses of all sizes in the United States solve their core problems with software. They empower entrepreneurs, growth companies, enterprises and visionary firms to achieve greater profitability and efficiency, valuation and ultimate success by building the right tools through custom software.   Ian has spent the better part of his career in consulting and has served in diverse industries as Finance, Oil and Gas, Retail Power, Field Services, Midstream Energy, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Transactional Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Restructuring, e-commerce, Retail and software development. Questions Could you share with us a little bit about your journey, which, by the looks of your bio, has been quite an extreme journey? You pretty much have dipped into all industries from private to public sector. So share with us a bit about your journey and how it is that you got to where you are today, being the Chief Solutions Architect and Partner at Zibtek. Can you tell us a little bit about what Zibtek offers? What problems is Zibtek solving for their customers? What are some things that we could do to make the channels easier for the customers, less effort for them to exert, less friction? Could you share with us maybe what you think the future of automation looks like for a business? Can you share with us how you think technology has disrupted the business industry and how it will continue to do so? Can you share with us how do you stay motivated everyday? Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can’t live without in your business? Can you share with us one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, either a book that you've read recently or a book that maybe you read a very long time ago, but it still has had a very big impact on you? Can share with us what is one thing that's going on in your life that you're really excited about, either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can they find you online? Could you share with us a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote or saying, because it helps to refocus you and just help you to be channeled back on what it is that you're working on? Highlights Ian shared that he has had the opportunity to see a lot of industries, and he thinks part of that started very early on. He was at a number of startups right out of college; he has launched 8 different products to market, saw the gambit and then did the MBA route, then jumped into consulting. So, right after the MBA, immediately sort of wanted to go into something that would let him see a lot of industries, a lot of verticals.   And in consulting, he had the opportunity to do that both on the I.T. side and on the finance side. So, really, just one option, he sort of expand his horizons, these sort of things. Ultimately wanted to get back to doing his own thing and found a business Zibtek and acquired 50% of it and that's 3 years now.   Ian shared that they started as a product company 15 years ago and ultimately grew to the point where they wanted to sell the business. And then after 5 years of growing that product, sold it and then for the last 10 years, they have been providing services to the marketplace for folks who maybe don't have an engineering team in-house or don't have the engineering competency in-house, but need expertise to build out software or build out a solution that's either custom fit for their business or adapt the same existing technology for their business. That's primarily what they do.   Me: Could you give me an example of something that you've done to solve your customers’ challenges? Software that maybe you've created that’s solving that issue?   Ian shared that they have a client that is in the healthcare space and they are running around doing prospective studies for people who have had sort of strong medical procedures and they needed a way to capture data that wasn't menial. So, before they're using clipboards and paper and using telephones and dialing out and doing all that stuff manually with a large team of people to get that perspective data. Zibtek built a solution that automates all of the follow ups, keeps it the data hipper compliant.   And then also helps them basically have the patient groups be blocked in effectively, statistically randomized ways. And it did a couple of things. And this is how it ties back to the sort of the customer experience. By automating sort of the manual process and then also removing that human element. It actually made it so that the patients who had just gone through these procedures and had opted into these studies were more likely to respond because it was on a medium, on their phone or computer that was much friendlier to their time. Much more intuitive to interact with and can be done in maybe 5 minutes.   Me: So, it's almost like you created like a specialized CRM for them that was really built to fit their business model.   Ian stated that in a certain sense, yes, it did all the communication to manage those individuals. It managed the follow ups and responses. But then it had a statistical engine behind it that allowed them to make sure that these patients sort of came through and randomized blocks.   Me: So, a big part of software development in a business can definitely impact the quality of the customer experience. We are now in a space globally where because of this pandemic, a lot of us have been forced to shift how it is that we're looking at the different channels by which we serve our customers. And so it's important to recognize that if it is that we are doing these things, what are some things that we could do to make the channels easier for the customers, less effort for them to exert, less friction.   What are maybe two to three top things as an engineer yourself, you're a solutions architect. So you are able to look at the big picture and maybe give us some main things that companies need to consider when they're designing this digitized strategy for their business. A lot of them may have been in the digital space, but probably they were not giving it as much priority as they would know because of the fact that their customers have shifted their behaviour and they're interfacing more with those platforms than to face-to-face ones.   Ian shared that he thinks the first and most important thing is take the customer's problems to the engineers as opposed to having a frontline person who is maybe just kind of filtering through that customer feedback to then give it to the engineers. Engineers are by nature, people who want to build tools to solve problems and by having a direct pipeline of those, let's say, customer complaints, customer problems, customer issues, going to the engineers as opposed to maybe filtered by a couple layers, you're going to get results much more quickly.   You're going to get your results and ultimately going to solve those problems and probably much more intuitive ways. And you can present those which suits the client. The second thing is figure out where you can as a business; automate routine simple tasks for the user and then figure out how at the same time of automating that task, “I can provide better customer service or better customer experiences in serving that client.” Sometimes that’s just through an interface but other times it is making somebody available to pick up the phone and talk with you, walk you through something. Just be available really quickly or provide a quick response to a customer query. So that's the second piece.   The third item that they would recommend is intentionally innovate. They don't think a lot of companies are going to fall behind because they're not spending sort of like the 3M rule of anywhere from 5%-10% of profits intentionally to sort of disrupt their own business and produce a solution that's ultimately better.   Technology is moving in a direction where its growth is accelerating, innovation is accelerating, and it's accelerating past any single company's ability to basically keep pace with those changes. So, an engineer that comes into their organization probably about 4 years, they're going to have to retool a little bit because the technology is changing so quickly.    So, the guys that are coming out right out of college, very valuable because they come with sort of these new skills ingrained. Now they are teaching them, they're training and they’re doing about six months of training. But really, if these guys are not retooling it about 6 years, they become kind of deadweight to certain extent.   Me: Almost like they're obsolete. They're no longer relevant because the technology has far superseded what existed 4 or 5 years ago.   Ian shared that he thinks automation is going to sort of go into that second category of what he described previously, where companies are going to try to as much as possible make it so that you have the equivalent of one click checkout for an experience or for a result.   And it's going to not necessarily remove jobs but he thinks it's going to make certain jobs more efficient. So, if you look at the guys at OnCourse Sales Automation on a mission, they have a bunch of tools combined in one that allows sales teams to be extremely efficient with their time. But it's not that it's eliminating sales jobs, it's actually making them more competitive and making it so that the sales personnel are much more oriented towards quality.   And he thinks that you’re going to see that be true across pretty much every spectrum. Where you’re going to get automation, first you’re going to have a flight to quality second. So, if he can remove the tedious tasks, then he needs to focus on quality and for the companies that don't focus on quality and don't focus on customer service….customer experience, then they're going to sort of fall behind.   Ian shared that we're seeing a trend and still the world is just kind of coming online broadly speaking. You have a trend where folks are moving to these online tools to solve problems. You used to go to the store and buy off-the-shelf software, put it in a CD drive, his computer doesn't have a CD drive anymore and do this that way.   And so, there's still a lot of very prominent, very powerful technologies that have not made their way to the cloud. There are companies in Salt Lake that they're talking to that are still on green screens, basically, where a lot of their stuff isn't networked to manage inventory, manage supplies, track quality, track prices, et cetera, or how long things have been in the warehouse. And so there's still and there's going to be for a long time a continued shift towards cloud first, browser based technologies that are going to facilitate really kind of things that we already did. But in a way that gives us much more data, much more accessibility and makes organizations much more efficient.   When asked about how he stays motivated, Ian shared that he thinks it's more of a process of sort of building habits. So, his day to day is very, very different, every single day is different as they’re solving different problems for clients. But his mornings are pretty routine, his evenings are pretty routine. At least they try to be. And then that sort of natural motivation is that he has a growing family and he wants to make sure that they're happy and taken care of.   And then he’s asking himself regularly, “Am I doing something that I find interesting and fulfilling?” And then he tries to sell himself the first hour of the day to focus on those things or the last hour or the day to focus on those things. And as long as he’s moving towards that direction, he’s very, very satisfied.   When asked about on online tool that he cannot live without in his business, Ian shared that www.tryoncourse.com is just one of those sort of sales automation tools he has been talking about. And they started using it and they think it's pretty exceptional. It basically is, in their view, sort of the future of CRM.   It's all of these tools, dialler SMS, what have you sort of rolled into one. And it's going to give them and it gives their sales team crazy amount of visibility that they didn't have previously with tools like Salesforce. They were using a phone dialler and they were also using MailChimp for drippy campaigns.   It's got all that stuff built in and they're just kind of adding more features to it all the time. And they’ve pretty radically simplified what they're executing in the sales process by moving to one of these sales automation platforms. And basically, they don't really know what they would do without it because everybody's sort of refers to it for the data. Everybody sort of refers to it for activity. So, it's pretty important.   Me: That’s your go to. It's funny you mention that because our episode that we released today for the podcast was with their Chief Customer Experience Officer or Chief Sales Officer, Gessie Schechinger from OnCourse sales platform. So, they're really disrupting the whole sales initiatives for businesses in terms of, as you said, putting everything in one place. So, I think it's really awesome that you mentioned that that's your online resource that you definitely can’t live without in your business.   Ian shared that the first book that had a big impact on him was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations from 1776. Just reading that, the man only wrote two books. He wrote that book and then he wrote basically, sort of a moral treatise on The Wealth of Nations was sort of the prelude to The Wealth of Nations. Both of those books are exceptional. But really, Wealth of Nations is absolutely phenomenal and important to understanding really basic economics.   The second piece is and he thinks that while the books put out actually not books, but letters put out by Warren Buffett are in many respects. So, he put out a book, one of the meetings that had a collection of all 50 letters. He thinks that those books are under read or that those letters are under read and are really instructive, not only sort of for financial matters, for managing a business, but also in managing. There are great lessons in managing and he has continually gone back to those resources, both of those to reread things, take notes, put that online, share his ideas with other people, get their feedback. And so those have been the two most resources for him.   When asked about something that he’s working on to develop himself or his people, Ian shared that he thinks internally they have had a pretty wonderful shift in defining within the organization how they want to continually improve their project management processes.   And going back to the very beginning of the conversation, where you sort of taking that customer feedback, they're being very aggressive, even as a service organization, to take customer feedback and then incorporate that into their engineering process.   They follow sort of a can ban trunk based development type methodology. And by taking the sort of consumer feedback or customer feedback or client feedback and rolling that into the process, they've really been able to deliver some tremendous results.   Now, they're still improving that, they're still making that better. They're still making that well, let's call it user friendly. And there's a lot of runway for them to continue to improve and he thinks that's the most exciting near-term project they're working on.   Me: So could you share with us if our listeners listen to this episode or better yet, when they listen to this episode and they say to themselves, I'd like to learn a little bit more about Zibtek. I'd also probably like to connect with Ian because he could probably offer some good insight. I could follow him and be a part of his community and what he's doing so that I can add better value to my organization and what I am doing.   Ian shared listeners can find him at – www.zibtek.com Ian Reynolds – hello@zibtek.com   They have a bunch of actually free resources up there. And in their blog, they're constantly sort of posting their findings for things, comparing technologies, et cetera. Where they’re posting their development methodology and their development standards in a few months. So check it out and they also have a bunch of presentations that are super valuable, super high value and worth checking out.   When asked about a quote or saying that helps him in times of adversity, Ian shared that it’s maybe not so much a direct quote, but it really is more so that the idea that feeling sorry for yourself or feeling down on yourself isn't helpful.   It's not a helpful characteristic. So, recognize that thought and then figure out what you should be doing and then go do that thing. So, it's kind of like grandma’s rule, grandma’s rule is you have to eat your vegetables before you can eat your dessert. And so, “Do the uncomfortable stuff first and then go to the fun stuff.”       Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners     Links   The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith     Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!    

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.Send us feedback at MetagnosisPodcast@gmail.com. [Transcript by Bob, our AWS robot secretary][0:00:13] Yuta: Okay, So this week, we read beginning of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And we only read about 5 to 7 chapters. But I found this personally. Very, I thought it was great. I was very entertained. And I think I learned a lot even though it's very old and its at the beginning of a long tradition of economics. But I thought it held up. Really well,[0:00:48] Henry: do you remember what year it was[0:00:51] Yuta: 1776? OK, it's just kind of crazy. Yeah, it's the year of the Declaration of Independence, and I think it's the year  critique of pure reason came out. So, oh, around that time? Around that time, I think. I might be thinking of a different book but it's around that. Came out right after, anyways, yeah. So I thought we would talk about the 1st two parts of what we read, which I would divide into basically an explanation of how markets and specialization work and how that creates wealth and the second part is going to be about what money is and, how labour on wealth relates to money or commodities.[0:02:00] Henry: it's kind of about how value works in the market, right?[0:02:03] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah. So, first, just to summarize it really quickly. I think it was basically, you know, we just talked about intro economics classes, but it was basically what you would get in an intro economics class. Now I think I was really surprised by how modern it was, and the writing was also, like, very readable. I really appreciated that. It's kind of rare for something, so old, but yes. So it explained that, you know. Okay, so one example I really liked was that in, like, poor tribes, basically, everyone is employed in a way because everybody is useful. Everybody has a way where they can contribute. But in wealthier countries, a lot of people are totally unemployed. And a lot of people who don't work at all like consumed 10 times more than people that work a lot. so it kind of it's kind of a weird situation, but yeah, it works out that way because of, he says specialization. I guess there's a lot of ways to go at this. But this is one way. With specialization, someone can focus on one task and get very good at that. And then through the chain of production, you can focus on your own task and create basically much more than, you would be able to on your own. So he has very concrete examples, which I really appreciated. His biggest example was with pins where he says, he actually described really in detail, the production of pins and it kind of surprised me. It's kind of, you know, trivial in a way. But I know it was told in a compelling way. and yeah, he very convincingly shows how factories can be so much more productive than a single person. I think in his example of something like 200 times or something on that massive scale[0:04:28] Henry: and even at that time before we have, you know, factories that we think of today assembly lines and things like that.[0:04:36] Yuta: yeah, not even talking about robots. They're competing. I think this is just people laboring but organizing that in different ways, not having massive returns,[0:04:50] Henry: and I think that just to recognize a point you made. It's a common theme throughout the book that he brings up lots of concrete examples of each of the concepts that he talks about. And if you are familiar with the idea, then it's sort of a little bit redundant. But it's super useful for learning and getting to know exactly what he's talking about.[0:05:13] Yuta: Yeah, so, yeah, I was going to bring up it reminds me it was very redundant to me. I felt like and also, I think, to a lot of people, like for someone who I mean, I think intro economics classes kind of are pretty redundant for a lot of people. I mean, if you read the newspaper and you kind of understand how trade works, things like that, it's not a lot of new concepts, but yeah, I guess it was also interesting. Interesting to see how this would be thought through from a perspective where it's not obvious he's, you know, probably most of the reason it's obvious to us now is because, Adam Smith and people like that discovered this, and it's kind of filtered down to everyone. Basically,[0:06:14] Henry: Yeah. I mean, this is not really a work of science, per se. It's I wouldn't know exactly how to describe the genre, but he's going through and he's giving an explanation of these things that are so commonplace that most people involved would already have some sort of intuition about, you know, their place within the system. But what he's bringing together is an overall explanation that accounts for the way that everything is already set up.[0:06:43] Yuta: Yeah. So I thought it was science because, he poses a theory about how society works. And then it's, you know, it's falsifiable? you can make predictions about specialization. His predictions would be like a country with more specialization has more wealth. Someone thought that, and then he you know, he has the empirical data that he looks at. So it is theory. So, yes. So what made you think that it isn't science?[0:07:22] Henry: okay. Yeah. Maybe it was a little bit too strong in claiming that it isn't a scientific work. I don't think that it practices the rigor that we would expect from social science in the time that we are talking about now. Yeah, but it was probably a very good work of social science at the time, for sure.[0:07:43] Yuta: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally agree. It doesn't resemble like a modern economics paper.[0:07:49] Henry: Yeah. I mean, not that I expected there to be a modern economics papers there. Yeah, so I guess that in terms of the standards of science today, it wouldn't be considered science. But at the time, yes, it would be a good work of science.[0:08:03] Yuta: I think it would. I don't know. I think it's still a work of science, but it's just that economics has adopted heavily mathematical formal methods. And Adam Smith didn't, which I mean, that's something. I mean, maybe in the rest of the look, more of it comes in. But it wasn't obvious to me that it would be like this. I thought maybe it would be have more formal work, but, not that that's a criticism.[0:08:35] Henry: Yes. And that's an interesting point.[0:08:38] Yuta: And it does make sense that it is less formal. Yeah, it is kind of less scientific, in a way it's more philosophical. Yeah, I get your point. Yeah, because you know, he is a philosopher and it's not like there was this long established tradition of economics. He's kind of creating the field largely so, I mean, that's how I see what the role of philosophers as being. It's looking at new aspects of reality that haven't been explored in a rigorous way and then creating the methodology to be able to that. And so that's definitely a philosophical process. Yeah, it's not a scientific process. You need a methodology to do science, you need to come up with the methodologies. At this primitive stage, it's more philosophical.[0:09:38] Henry: Yeah, I guess this goes beyond our original motivations for talking about this. Yeah, that is an interesting point. And putting this in the context of, like, how exactly should you read this? You're not looking for like, oh, he had this experiment that he observed where these people were trading these things or using this thing is money. But it turns out we found this evidence that it isn't exactly the way he said it was. So therefore his theory is wrong. Like that's not how you should be reading this[0:10:07] Yuta: Yeah, and I mean, so far, I think he's, he's been born out pretty right about, you know, this first part that we've been we've been talking about and I think it makes sense to talk about most of the aspects a little bit because it's, you know, the, of the founding of discipline. But yeah, we can talk about the more another time.[0:10:37] Henry: Yeah, I also want to say, so maybe getting back onto the core material. You were mentioning how first he observes that in a poor tribe, right was the example. But everyone is basically employed end in that way. Everyone is not completely self sufficient, is pretty self sufficient. They can get their own food and they maintain their own shelter, and they get whatever the resources they need directly. They don't rely on other people for necessary. Resource is. But one of the aspects of this is that if you weren't self sufficient, not only would you not be employed that you would be dead like it's not really a matter of the everyone decides to be employed. It's more that you can't not be employed.[0:11:29] Yuta: I think we'll Another thing is even went in communities that are highly interdependent, like poor communities that are highly interdependent. I think everyone is still employed just because it's easy to be useful in a city where, I guess, more There isn't, like, a huge inequality in the returns to labour. Something we thought.[0:12:00] Henry: Yeah, this is another point that he brought up it. Was that all right? Uh huh. It was, according to his observations, it doesn't seem that people very and natural talent Teoh a very significant degree, or at least not to a significant degree in comparison to the ah possible differences and returns the labour that adults seem to have. No. And the explanation for this is that are the justification for how this could be the case, while still there is such a discrepancy in return. So labor is that in fact, under certain circumstances, specialization being allowed will allow you to provide much more value than if you weren't specialized.[0:12:48] Yuta: Yeah, so yeah. So how that would apply to the poor tried, I think, is even if people are you know, their specialized like it's the tribe where you know, you have the hunters, and then you have They're gathers. You have people tending to the food, growing crops and people hunting like that's specialization, But they're still going to be poor, and it's still going to be very high, great or ratio of people that are doing useful work. So it's not, just being, you know, self sufficient, even like kind of interdependent societies can be poor. Ah, and have high employment.[0:13:43] Henry: I think there's a difference between interdependence and ah specialization because you ca NBI interdependent and still not be specialized. You conduce a lot of different tasks, but not all the tasks. So I guess that maybe what it is is that we're creating a false dichotomy between no specialization and being specialized. It's more where along the scale of specialization is allowed in your society.[0:14:12] Yuta: Yeah, Okay. And I would definitely yeah, the tribes air less specialized,[0:14:21] Henry: right? Yeah. It's not that they have no special visions, just that they're less specialized. And that has something to do with the reason that they're not as productive.[0:14:31] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah, let's exactly. And that's yeah, to move ahead. Yeah, that's yeah. Basically this point here. I think that the more you specialized, you can, kind of a choir mastery in this very specific thing because you're doing it, you know, for hours, every day and even begin to invent tools to, help with that. And yeah, I mean, his explanations. I really liked one of them here. They're so concrete. When here is about a boy, he seems to say it was an actual home boy, but it's boy like to play with his friends a lot. And so his job was to like this play fellows. Yeah, his I don't even know what this was. But some something with a furnace. You know, I I don't know e I live in the person chain. I have worked in, whatever factory, but so he had some task to do other furnace. And then he figured out a way to, like, open the furnace or something if he attached to rope to it to another part of the contraption. And then So he did that. And then he went out, went to play with his friends, So yeah. Adam Smith. Yeah, besides status as an example of, I guess ingenuity, and someone having with specialized task, allowing for, more productivity. All right. Yeah. And it's although it's not more productivity if you're just playing, if you show someone your invention them, that's definitely very useful,[0:16:17] Henry: right? So he describes. This is an example of specialization where it's not that your specialized in doing a particular form of like, the work that needs to be done to produce the thing. It's that there's a specialization in other directions as well. And I think that he calls this class of people philosophers right. There's a quote I highlighted. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade and some by that of those who are called philosophers or menace speculation, whose trade is not to do anything but to observe everything and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant into similar objects in their progress of society. Philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal, our soul, trade and and occupation of a particular class of citizens. And that was one sentence.[0:17:14] Yuta: Yeah, and, of course, Smith Bottoms of himself. I mean, he was a philosopher going on and on an economist[0:17:23] Henry: e. Well, I think that I sort of read this as, ah, he calls them philosophers. But maybe today we would call them academics, scientists and philosophers.[0:17:36] Yuta: Oh, I thought he meant philosophers in particular. But[0:17:40] Henry: But, I mean, if he was looking at, like, if he was to, you know, come to the 21st century, I think that he would identify those people as what he meant by philosophers as well. Do you[0:17:51] Yuta: think? I don't know. I mean, well, Adam Smith in particular was a false for, you know, as we would think of a false for right. But yeah, maybe. Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, Mom, What I read isn't telling me, but it's but yeah, I think you meant probably philosophers. And you could maybe in include some of what scientists do inside of that. But it seemed like you meant fosters. Just be. Is he talked about them being, kind of most associated with ah, ideas in abstraction. He says he kind of has Ah, He takes the Shawna from when? he says that people are like you mentioned, you know, broadly similar in talent. But once they kind of specialized, they can convince themselves, Like philosophers convinced themselves that they're just, like, totally different than it. Just like a different kind of, you know, being force. yeah. You know, that would be an interesting thing to look into. How? And I'm also interested in how yeah, when people started thinking of themselves as economics Oh, muscle. I mean, like, why did he write this book? Like, you know, his previous work was pretty well received. Was about, you know, on the sentiments off moles. There's something thought look on that very straightforwardly philosophy and mean. I mean, it's in that tradition on directly sites fosters when he writes this thing, it is about, wealth.[0:19:54] Henry: Yeah, I guess I I see. It just sort of him musing about like, these are a ton of things that I've been thinking about, and it actually fits together pretty well. So I'm gonna write this book about it like it's a very it's a neat thing, cause it's, you know, written in the style of the sort of philosophical texts of the time that air read a lot in false E, But it's about, like, you know, the real world. Very normal things that happened rather than very up shark things.[0:20:29] Yuta: Yeah, there is. Yeah, there's like like we talked about that level of abstraction, but he always like, and he usually having starts with the abstract statements, like, you know, specialization brings wealth. But then he uses the extremely concrete examples. Well, which makes it beyond that part is very different from philosophy. Yeah, maybe his fall self goal of training paid off. I'm son. Yeah, I think that was a good point. It's definitely structured in the way that there, Yeah, that philosophical works were Yeah, like, Yeah, a lot. Like, David Hume.[0:21:10] Henry: Brian? Yeah. Exactly. Also[0:21:11] Yuta: as old since yeah, as always. You know Smith earlier where[0:21:16] Henry: I think they both have Hume and Smith, both of Scottish ancestry as well.[0:21:21] Yuta: Yeah, I think. Yeah. I think they're both in in Scotland for the most part. And then Anna Smith studied at Oxford, but yeah, I think they were in the same basically group of people[0:21:33] Henry: uses Scotland for a lot of examples. Really funny. you[0:21:38] Yuta: also England, England. Like the shining? yeah,[0:21:43] Henry: all right. Yeah. All their confusing names for different amounts of money. Anyway, so Okay, this So this first section is about Ah, what was your delineation of it? Again?[0:22:01] Yuta: It's about specialisation or how wealth is created through specialization, right? It's 11 Other point is I'm He says that specialisation is, biggest in manufacturing and that agriculture is kind of similarly productive. Basically everywhere.[0:22:24] Henry: Oh, yeah, that was I didn't really understand exactly what the purpose of thought section was. Yeah, So he says that it doesn't really matter where you drive your culture. It's not gonna be any more efficient in different locations.[0:22:38] Yuta: Yeah, And he says, like wealthier countries put more resources into their agriculture. But like, per unit of resource, more labor, if they're not any more efficient than in a poor country.[0:22:54] Henry: Right? And you were first back to this later actually to say that certain agricultural products are good, stable values to measure things by but also in regards to this point. Hey, does talk about it in terms of specialization, which I think is like the way that you would think of a specialization. Is that its different people deciding to focus on particular kinds of work rather than doing many different kinds of work. But he also, relates this really closely to I think this is a good insight to specialization of time, in place as well. But, ah, he refers a lot to opening not necessarily global, but a larger marketplace so that you can have certain areas that are better doing certain things, Ah, to do those things there and then you can transport it over to another place. And as long as the transportation is ah, you know, not as costly as the efficiency gain. Then it's, ah, role. Better to do in that other location.[0:24:02] Yuta: Yeah, Yeah. This geography plays a large role in his explanation in other places as well. Like he identifies that cities in the coast and then just, the wealthy regions in general tend to be along coasts or along like a a river. That, is very good for transportation on, right? Yeah, he says, Yeah, that's because if you, well, if there, then you can transport your wares to a lot of different places and convert it to things that are useful to you. Weaken specialize more basically BZ Evo access to a wire market,[0:24:45] Henry: right? Exactly. So it's and more Special Edition leads to more efficiency. More wealth?[0:24:51] Yuta: Yeah, I think the word eases. It's like the extent of the market is greater in those areas. Yeah, you're able to sell toe wide range of people is if you like, live in China. Yeah. Yeah. So if you live in the middle of a country and you don't have access to ports, then if you make you know 10 million pins, then you have no no one to sell them to. It's it's kind of pointless to make that many pins. So you have to kind of make a few pins, maybe to say you can sell to your town. But then you have to spend your time on other stuff if you want to be as productive as you can and then you're specializing specialising less. So, yeah, everyone's were[0:25:38] Henry: soft overall, right? Right. Yeah, that's the That's a major theme of specialization is that it's ah, very collaborative effort. Specialization is not to help certain people of the expense of others. It actually will make everyone better involved. Our every everyone will be a better off who's involved in the specialization, you know, game.[0:26:00] Yuta: Just about a month. Yeah, he talks about it's collaboration, but it's based on ah, self interest. Everyone's working based on self interest without at this point, I feel like this. I mean, this is kind of reveal, right? But yeah, it's, but it's like, surprisingly, I think a lot of people don't. Yeah, they don't like this idea or agree with it. What was just kind of always spice to me it because I think it's almost like a political topic now, but I think it's something that's empirically correct. So it should. It should be me on debate.[0:26:46] Henry: Well, in terms of the modern contacts. First of all, here's a quote that, you know, we can't not to say. Ah, but man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brother, and and it is in vain for him to expect it to be there. But by their benevolence on Lee, it will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self love in his favor and true them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. And then there's the quote about the Baker is a little and the junior that's really famous. Yeah, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves not to their humility but to their self love and never talk of them of our own necessities. But if their advantages and what I was so yeah, those were good coats. But what I was going to say is that, I think that in the modern context, it's it's interesting to think about this as I was reading, because he gives all these examples and it's sort of like trying to justify, ah, specialization and you know, lots of other things that will get you. But it's so weird because we just take it really for granted in modern society, like you just take it for granted that you can go to the score to get food, and you don't want to make your own food like let's just I couldn't have ever amounted to any other way it would. It just seems ah, like completely different life to have to grow your own food, you know? Yeah. And for[0:28:27] Yuta: for him, that's also the truth, right? Oh,[0:28:31] Henry: yeah. He's living in a society that I don't know exactly where he's living at the time, but there is also this specialization already, but yeah, I couldn't imagine, like only being able to get food from my town. Are you something even?[0:28:49] Yuta: Yeah, that. I mean, that would mean you're living in a basically try, bring like like, there's a few in in the Congo or something,[0:28:59] Henry: right? Yeah, ya. But when you talk about the sort of political arguments that are happening, I almost wonder if it's that it's become such a baseline toe have all of the structures of specialization that the arguments are about very minor differences. But since everyone just accepts the baseline, they've seen relatively large,[0:29:26] Yuta: I think. Among economists, that's definitely I think the case. I think pretty much every minute stuff just yeah, I think that any economist will say, kind of this specialization and markets are do a pretty good job of, Verity of things on. Then they'll argue about, you know, some of the limitations of markets. But I think in the general public, the general polkas in anywhere near at that point. But yeah, that's Simmons. Another discussion. True? Yeah. Okay. Ah, but but you do hear you know all the time about you know, the invisible hand. People just like take downs of the invisible hand of the market or people or kind of greed and selfishness being just basically bad things that are basically bad for people without any acknowledgement of some of its benefits at times.[0:30:37] Henry: Yeah, I agree. But it also seems justice intuitive that people do expect to be compensated for their efforts like they'll argue about, Ah, you know, being nice and not being selfish when it's about things that are, like, special. But when it comes to going to work, you're like, yeah, I want to get better pay check if I can. Like, I don't feel bad about that.[0:31:05] Yuta: I'm and have anything. Some of these people. Okay. Okay.[0:31:11] Henry: Yeah, maybe. Maybe we're talking about different groups, but it seems some majority of people are sort of on board with the whole, like exchanging labor for money and that sort of[0:31:21] Yuta: thing. Yeah. I mean, yeah, perspective. This very messed up from being a crazy liberal arts college. Okay, of anyways, so should we talk about the second part?[0:31:39] Henry: Yeah, yeah, let's do that.[0:31:42] Yuta: Yeah. So the second part, he goes on to talk about what basically went wealth is and how it's transferred between people and the form that it's transferred between people, which is basically commodities on. Then eventually money. And he identifies of money like the value of money. It's kind of it's an interesting question. Like what? How does money have value when it's so what? He and then fights this, that the value behind money is the labor that goes into the goods. So when you buy, I guess[0:32:27] Henry: I think that's the value of the goods, right?[0:32:32] Yuta: well, it's the value of the currency as well, he says. It's It's the value of the labor that goes into producing the goods that your purchasing[0:32:46] Henry: well, that's the value of the goods. But how do you determine how much the value of the currency is[0:32:53] Yuta: by how much something costs? And then,[0:32:56] Henry: well, that's what we're trying to determine. How much How much does a loaf of bread cost in terms[0:33:01] Yuta: of literacy? So let's say it's $10. I think Adam Smith would say, Ah, the bread costs $10 because it took $10 of labour to produce the bread.[0:33:20] Henry: Ah, well, maybe you were starting a different places. I'm thinking of like, imagine we didn't have money or we didn't have a centralized system of money. Then how do we get from that to having money?[0:33:32] Yuta: Okay, I guess Weekend, that's a better place to start. So[0:33:36] Henry: we don't have dollars to reference. We just have lives of bread and, you know, other commodities.[0:33:45] Yuta: well, yeah, well, in that kiss, yeah, it's I mean, trade is a lot harder. Obviously the most. The easiest way to do it would be to trade another loaf of bread. but then he talks about oxen. Became the next kind of one of the first forms of money. Basically, right. Homer talked about people's armor being valued in terms of money. Someone had, in terms of oxen. I mean, someone had armor worth 10 oxen 100 oxen. Yeah.[0:34:27] Henry: See, you measure things in terms of oxen.[0:34:29] Yuta: Yeah, because I s oxen were useful to everyone. So you didn't. Yeah, I kind of have to, yeah. Come up with some artificial. Yeah,[0:34:44] Henry: it was basically a Barner because you're bartering with something that actually has the value that you're trying to get. Like, intrinsically. Yeah, the difference is that since everyone uses oxen, it's sort of fungible You can you can use as an intermediary value you don't toe like, expect the person that you're gonna be trading to yuta have to want the thing you have already. Yeah, yuta, they will.[0:35:09] Yuta: Yeah. So commodity is something that's basically interchangeable, right? So yeah, basically, oxygen became a commodity which Yeah, it's kind of halfway to a currency, as I see.[0:35:24] Henry: Yeah, they were proto currency[0:35:28] Yuta: on young and from there, yeah, you eventually get to Hey, talks about precious metals have always been very popular. Ah, forms of currency because, says most important beacon split them apart. And then you can also put them back together without altering their value. Easy. Can you refuse the metals? Melton in season[0:35:56] Henry: and they have a really scarcity as well. It's not easy to counterfeit it.[0:36:01] Yuta: Yeah, and then this goes to my original point where talks about when the gold mines in America were discovered over. Uh oh, but I[0:36:12] Henry: just was still happening at the time.[0:36:15] Yuta: Yeah. Yeah, that And let's Yes, 70 76. Yeah, that's where reading[0:36:23] Henry: you and always California. Yeah.[0:36:27] Yuta: Which? I don't think it's happened at this at this point. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think this happens way. But anyways, he says the value of gold in Europe went down to 1/3 of its virginal value because the amount of labor required to produce gold became dramatically less after, the gold mines were discovered because it's easy to find gold and dig it out. And if you have, you know, a scarcity in in nature than you have to work a lot harder to get smaller amounts,[0:37:06] Henry: isn't I think this is. He doesn't mention it in here. But there's another similar story of when Spain was conquering South America. They found a bunch of gold mines there as well, and also got a lot of gold from the Incas and the Aztecs and all that. And they brought all the gold back to Seo hand It was it was, uh,[0:37:29] Yuta: around with. There wasn't original point. yeah. OK, so that wasn't[0:37:35] Henry: even worth it to bring it back to Spain because it was so deep about devalued by having so much.[0:37:43] Yuta: yeah. So that was my point about, you know, labour being force for Adam Smith, the value behind currency of the OCR. Different meeting, you know?[0:37:57] Henry: Oh, yeah, I I agree with that. Yeah,[0:38:00] Yuta: OK. Do you agree with Smith?[0:38:05] Henry: Do I agree that labour is what is money value? Yeah. Ah, yes. But I think that it might over simplify it to say it like that because it's not. It's not the labor. Ah, to be able to make something like that. It's more that the labour required to actually produce a valid one. So, for example, he describes how gold coins were given and silver coins were given stamps of approval by some centralized authority in order to show that, you know, it's ah has the right amount of the metal in it. So it actually I was able to require that much labor to create something I thought, but you could, in theory, counterfeit it by not putting as much labor in it, but still getting a stamp. So there's a little bit of marginal room for, problems with that. But[0:39:10] Yuta: I think that's a little counterfeit. Money is a little different. I think that's saying this is like the kind of currency where there is value to it, but you're kind of I'm faking it. And, like the labor that Smith is talking about, isn't the labor that goes into stamping right? It's it's labor that goes into what you can purchase with it.[0:39:36] Henry: Well, I think that to an extent. Actually, it is the labor that goes into stamping it. It's not the labor of like, actually, you know, taking a stamp and doing that. It's the labor of doing that, validly getting a valid[0:39:48] Yuta: Samp. wait, what's what's not labour?[0:39:54] Henry: Well, it's hard to do that t get a valid stamp. You have to go through some process.[0:40:01] Yuta: But why? Why would that give something? Value it?[0:40:05] Henry: Well, here's here's what I imagine is like Imagine there's 100 gold coins, but only half of them have stamps of approval, right? You know, then only the gold coins was stamps of, well, the gold coins with stance approval have a certain value. And the gold coins without the sensor approval have a lesser value.[0:40:25] Yuta: I don't I don't think so. Because, like, if I just if I got some locks and puts in stamps on them, they wouldn't have value. I mean,[0:40:35] Henry: right, right. Because it's not the value of getting your own stamp on the coin. It's the value of getting a certain valid sample on the coin. And that is limited. Like, let's say they only allowed some 50 stamps. Then it's gonna be really hard to get another stamp.[0:40:56] Yuta: Okay, this is funny, because I actually disagree with Adam Smith. Okay, I also disagree with you, uh,[0:41:05] Henry: might be stretching the term of, like, what? Labour is the flying to here. But what what were you gonna say?[0:41:14] Yuta: And also you're disagreeing with Adam Smith. Ah, yeah, your your, So I guess, Yeah. I mean, I can go with that example. Maybe I get a bunch of people, and we agreed Teoh, you know, agree on a stamp to put on rocks, and then we put them on, you know, a limited number of rocks on 10 rocks not still make those rocks valuable. There's be something behind it. Give value to those rocks. Yes, this is Yeah, This sounds very philosophical. Maybe maybe this[0:41:54] Henry: Well, so what we're talking about by value here is the value of the things that you can trade for. Ah, the rocks, right? Or the labor that goes into the things you can trade the rocks[0:42:05] Yuta: worth. I think that's the question. It's why do why does Currency of Valium? Well, if[0:42:12] Henry: it does have value, that would be the value. Right?[0:42:15] Yuta: Well, that's one answer to the question, but that's kind of assuming an answer already.[0:42:20] Henry: So this is why I think so. I I definitely am stretching it. I didn't reed this anywhere in his book, but going to your example with rocks, right? I think that the reason that your rocks no one would accept them like you would be able to trade them for anything is because it's too easy to create a counterfeit rock. It takes a very little labor Teoh counterfeit one of the rocks[0:42:48] Yuta: in my exit. On my next example, I would I had assigned with the community of people to only recognize this particular stamp, and I'll just say, you know, you can't counterfeit. There's only 10 of the rocks. It's a limited spy.[0:43:05] Henry: Yeah, but you don't know where old 10 rocks are it every time, right? Every[0:43:09] Yuta: time I try to rock some that you do.[0:43:12] Henry: Okay. Well, then I guess that it's really hard to counterfeit because you know where all the rocks are. So it's impossible. So that's about[0:43:21] Yuta: it. That's the set up of the new. So do they have value?[0:43:26] Henry: I think that they would have more value than if they were counterfeit. Herbal? Yes.[0:43:32] Yuta: Why? But they wouldn't like the rocks there. Still useless like nobody want. Right? Why would anyone, yeah, take anything[0:43:46] Henry: for the rocks? Because they have guaranteed scarcity. it's just like how we use dollars, right? The dollar is, you know, doesn't take a lot of material to make a dollar,[0:44:01] Yuta: but there's a lot of things that are scarce but that are worthless. Give me an example. okay. I mean, I could make ah painting a really shitty pain you, and there's only one of them, but it's worthless. Give to anyone but me.[0:44:25] Henry: Well, they might be easy to counterfeit that painting because no one you know, paying attention to your painting so no one's keeping track of where it is and all that only, gosh, paintings are very valuable, and there's a lot of effort put into making sure that you don't have a counterfeit. So that's part of why they have value. If no one could tell which the counterfeit was, then they wouldn't have as much value.[0:44:54] Yuta: It's not OK if paintings were counter for the ball, but they would have less value by. It's not the fact that they're scarce. That makes them valuable. Is I could I mean, I think you you also changed my scenario to I mean, I could just say in my scenario, my painting is not gonna credible. You know? I put it online and it's yeah, whatever. Whatever I put in a bank vault, whatever. so you know, I think it makes it valuable. It wouldn't be valuable. Would still be junk. I[0:45:38] Henry: do get the intuition you're going for, and I'm trying to think of how you would justify the other side. yeah.[0:45:46] Yuta: Let me Come on. The other side could just not have a[0:45:52] Henry: I think, though, that there is something to this, that scarcity is an important part of why certain money has value.[0:46:01] Yuta: No, I I agree. If something isn't scare, Senate can't serve as a store of value. But I don't think that's, uh okay.[0:46:11] Henry: But it's not sufficient to make something valuable.[0:46:14] Yuta: Yeah, and it's almost besides the point I want to say, and I think Smith Yeah, maybe off off reed closer. See what he would say? But if he does it, and five, the labour or the value with the labor.[0:46:34] Henry: Yeah, I think you're right. Ah, that one of the so. Another reason that would sorry. Another factor in determining the value of your painting is how much effort went into Or you know, how much labor went into the creation of the painting, right? And if it didn't really take much effort like you're not a good painter and you didn't spend your entire life on this painting, then[0:46:56] Yuta: I mean, honestly, if I spent 100 hours on a painting, I think it would still be pretty much worthless on the market.[0:47:05] Henry: Well, right, because you're about painter, it's labour's equally valuable. Right?[0:47:12] Yuta: Okay. It's okay. so, yeah, all Aiken explain Smith for for the listeners a little bit on this point where he says, Yeah, it's not just, you know, the number of hours that you put in that is the value behind currency. Uh huh. Okay. yeah, he says, it's labour, but you have to take into account the number of years that you want that went into learning the skill to produce labor and yourself taking to count the intensity of labor. So, like 10 hours of hard work could be more labour than 20 hours of lazy work or someone with 10 years of experience could, used more labour in in an hour that in someone with no experience in towers, eso and this I think, Yeah, I'm Is that Do you agree with that? Um,[0:48:19] Henry: yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking about. So yeah, I think, but that's how you can differentiate labor. And it's so it's not just the exact thing that you did. It's everything that was required to come to that point that you could do that.[0:48:36] Yuta: Yeah, And I think you made a comment along these lines, but I think this is I mean handing. He massively stretched the definition of labor here. I did not good. Yeah. So this is one of my points of disagreement with him, Which by, by the way, it's totally I mean, I think this was so great of work so far, and I'm gonna definitely reed the whole thing, so I don't mean it's not still see a gotcha. You know, 300 years, I e hopefully reason made progress. That's yeah, it's not impressive at all. You just disagree, but, uh yeah, I do disagree on this point. and this kind of young it kind of starts up this point were he stretches the definition of labor so much that it basically to me, I think he acquits it with value, Basically, because he doesn't If you just talk to like a regular person, Labour is, you know, the amount of effort you put into stuff basically or the amount of work. And if, yeah, if someone with 10 years of experience does just some highly specialize thing, I don't know. To me, that doesn't seem like, a lot of labor went into the exact[0:50:05] Henry: like, if you're a Web designer and you goto work and you sit and watch you two for eight hours, and then Stanton our programming then that's not a lot of labor, even though you're paid a ton of money. Yeah,[0:50:17] Yuta: so, Yeah. Good example. Yes. A Smith would say that person put in. Let's say they make, $150,000 a year and morning working, you know, at a grocery store. Full time makes, let's say, 30,000. Ah, year, Smith would say, My reading is the programmer put in five times more labour than the grocery store clerk?[0:50:46] Henry: Roughly. Yeah. I mean, there are other factors that go into determining your salary as well, but that is one of the major ones.[0:50:54] Yuta: Well, I wouldn't Smith say. I mean, that is what span currency. But then anyways, yes. So he would identify it. Obviously not with, like, the physical labor, which is, I think, kind of what you would normally think of Labour's mean, But he would have been fired with instead. kind of. The programmer spent many years in school learning to program Probably yes, pro four years in college for most rumors, something that I'm not maybe a couple years of experience. while this clerk didn't put in and then So if you have all those up labour of the parameters five times more than the labour of the grocery store clerk[0:51:46] Henry: yeah, that is that is an interesting observation. I I think you're right that Ah, he is equating labor and value. But I I wonder if this is a mistake, though I maybe he intends to do that. And he's trying to show that what we think of us Labour really should be encompassing. What we refer to is value.[0:52:13] Yuta: I I think he's trying to do that. But I think it is confused because he's trying to explain, You know, with book is the wealth of nations. It's trying explain, like, what is it behind? Yeah, currency that has value. Like why do people, care about accumulating these, bits of currency? it's not obvious that, you know, I mean, for a long time, currencies didn't have value yet to actually barter. And so there's something behind it. It's and then he's saying, It's the labor, so that that seems to me. It's like if you say labor, is what gives things, value it. I think it's a specific answer, you know, a clear answer. And then, if you kind of conflate labor with value than it's almost like you're not answering the question at all,[0:53:16] Henry: you might even call his. You might even calls approach a labour theory of value. So yeah, just completely not the lever theory of value.[0:53:29] Yuta: No, it is. I think that's that's when it's going, Yeah, where is going to go next? That actually saw a super spies? Because in a class refreshing, your yeah, I read a lot of capital by Karl Marx, and eating Tree starts off. Basically, this is almost the same exact way, except he starts with, Ah, currency and labour are and value instead of I'll Smith starts with specialization all the time. They're pretty similar. And then, yeah, in my understanding from three years ago, this is, the same argument that Karl Marx gave. He even has the same examples. Basically, I think he made a views diamonds instead of gold. But I think he probably talked about gold to But how? Diamonds are very hard to get. You have to like they're in after our something. And then just people spend. It's like he kind of describes how hard it is to mine diamonds. And he says, That's why diamonds are very valuable on bits. Eso it's the labor. That's the store for the what backs value behind no currency and capital and young. I mean, from there it goes, you know, Ah ha, you is the same argument, which really surprised me. I mean, when I read Marx is book, it just It was just, like, totally ridiculous to me,[0:55:16] Henry: huh? But now that it says it now, it's fine. No, no, I e no. Well, I think, though, so[0:55:26] Yuta: Oh, Adam Smith came way before marks, If I remember correctly, so I mean and I'm pretty sure marks. Yeah. You know, he had the benefit of hindsight a little bit[0:55:38] Henry: to to that. Ah, this is just a tangential point. But this marks. Do you think he also is talking about it in the sense of that, certain labor can be differentiated like some labor is more valuable than other labor.[0:55:56] Yuta: Yeah, he, talks about specialization. I remember that specifically and then talks about Yeah, kind of. And he wrote this 18 67 came out Capital. See, he has almost 100 years on up on Smith. So I think there's more, you know, special efficient at this point. I can't Yeah, I can't remember exactly. I'll look into it. exactly how he explains the differences in the value of labour for, like, information workers. Basically[0:56:39] Henry: Well, what? I always interpreted the Marxist for you to be. But maybe I don't have a clear view, as I thought is that, it doesn't matter what people want. It's not turned by the market how valuable your thing is. It's just determined by how much effort you put into making. The thing that's about valuable it is, and you don't seem too problematic with that is that then all labor is basically of the same value because it's just the same amount of effort there are. You know, it's measured in amount of effort you put into it, but clearly I think that what ah Smith is trying to villainy between different labour's that have different value is some labor is more valuable if it's mawr demanded. Like if more people want it,[0:57:33] Yuta: well, I don't think I mean, I agreed up to that last point. I don't He doesn't bring in whether people want the commodities so far in the book. I think he says, unifies value with labor, and I think he's the same with marks on that point.[0:57:58] Henry: Maybe they differentiate later than I. I guess I would have to read it again. But I interpreted as, that's part of what he meant by not all labour has the same Ah, like, you know, great value. Some labour's worth twice as much of the labour for certain reasons.[0:58:20] Yuta: Yeah. Okay. All of godson quotes[0:58:25] Henry: about reed weaken. Okay, You wanna say some puts?[0:58:32] Yuta: okay, here it is, the real price of everything. What? Everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. right. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it and who means not user consumed himself. But to exchange it for other commodities is equal to the quantity of labour which enables him to purchase or command labor. Therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. Yeah, and that just seems like pure labor theory of value. Mm. Thank you. Yeah. And I agree with your impression of marks. I think that is what Marx says. And I also think that's what it says. Okay.[0:59:36] Henry: Okay. Yeah, I e think I'm coming to a better idea now. Yeah, I think the differentiation comes later. They do agree that labour is the basis for value, but and, you know, it will come most later where they disagree about some things[0:59:51] Yuta: and also like the beginning part. I think I don't think like Marx understood much of what Smith was saying. First part about specialization from what I remember, and it's kind of weird abuse to me. It seems like if he specialized, it allows you to, Even if he put in the same amount of work, it allows you to be wildly more productive and, you know, better compensated as a result because of you know, how your labor is organized and yeah, I thought the first the entire point of the first few chapters was that how you organized labor can, you know, increase the productivity of a group of people by 102 100 times. And to me, That's just those all seem, like arguments against the labor theory of value. It, you know, taken Teoh, if you just extend those arguments out a little bit. So, you know, I think clearly the first part of that book is very much, not like Marks. And yeah, it was a little confusing to me. Not that second part. Yeah, it seems to me to be in opposition with first part.[1:01:15] Henry: Ah, I guess that so in the same way that having put effort into a skill say, right man will increase the the amounts of labour you're capable doing and given time, I think that he would also say that by being in a some organizational structure that will also increase the amount of value or the amount of labor that you're able to dio here. I can see kind of your original point, which is that he's kind of using labour in a weird way.[1:01:51] Yuta: Yeah, And you're of Freudian slip.[1:01:54] Henry: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. So they're doing the same, like, you know, they're putting in the same Maybe effort and value are better. Words sees. Yeah, So they put the same effort. Uh oh, that's are, you know, I I know. But[1:02:10] Yuta: even less true effort just seems more, clear. We not value. but yeah, yeah, it does seem like Adam Smith's idea of labor or definition of labour becomes very tortured at this point where you would identify just busy specialized. Let's say he's one of those examples like, Let's say, someone makes was a pin maker said he made pins for 10 hours a day and he produced 100 pins. Well, it's I'm all Smith, I think uses 20 pins a day something. What is it? You know, it's a lot of work to participant, and you want to read about that. And so you didn't read the book, and then he joins the factory and then with 10 other people. Let's say he brute. He produces £5000 a day. altogether. Yeah, You? Yeah. So yeah. Hey, became dramatically more productive. And I guess Smith would say he put in more labour into it, but e did not find out with education. Really? the I mean, maybe you needed a little bit of training, but not much. And also, if you just took the counterfactual of whether you go into the factory or on your own. You know, the amount of flirting you need to go on your own is lot closure. but yeah, so I mean, yeah, that definition of flavor where the person working in the factory puts in, you know, 100 times more labour, whatever or whatever numbers is kind of tortured definition of flavor from[1:04:03] Henry: the way that you phrase it is a little difficult. I think it may be. Here's ah way you could say is that hey, puts in it requires more labour of him.[1:04:18] Yuta: Yeah, that I mean, that doesn't seem true.[1:04:22] Henry: Well, I guess that the intuition is that he's putting in the same amount of effort, right? It requires the same on effort on his part. Just in that, those 10 hours what he's doing, he's putting, you know, the same amount of calories towards You don't work. Yeah, try it left. So in that sense, he's not doing anything extra. So what would you call it that is increasing when he's working in the factory?[1:04:50] Yuta: His spot activity, I mean well, that we can all agree on, like Smith and me and you[1:04:58] Henry: so maybe is it that he's conflating effort and productivity,[1:05:05] Yuta: which is the same as conflating labor and ah, value.[1:05:10] Henry: Yeah. Okay, I see your 0.1.[1:05:15] Yuta: Yeah, but then Okay. So[1:05:17] Henry: I think, though, that it's not so suffered because I think that you could conceive like it's possible to conceive of effort and productivity in a unitary concept concept. It's sort of just has those two things as factors.[1:05:36] Yuta: wait. What? Ok, so what? Even this effort. And then I didn't understand your point.[1:05:44] Henry: So I would say that I'm just kind of coming up with us, but I'm trying to work along with how you're describing it. So effort would be the amount of actual physical actions you have to dio in order to complete size. We were actually mean. Yeah, sure. I'm avoiding a labor just because he uses it differently and I don't want to be like this. And then productivity would be the actual results of your actions.[1:06:17] Yuta: I Okay, I agree with that on. Yeah,[1:06:24] Henry: I did hide this sort of a Did you can have this sort of unitary concept. Call it labor, which is something of a combination of the amount of effort and the amount of things you produce per effort.[1:06:40] Yuta: I don't understand what e I mean. Okay, but that's ridiculous.[1:06:47] Henry: Well, so imagine I think of it this way. So imagine you're driving your car, right? Your car is going to go at a specific speed. Let's call it, you know, the speed of the car and you're gonna be driving for a certain amount of time. Let's call that the duration of the drive. Then you can have a concept of Thea Mount of Distance you drove, which is going to be determined by the multiplication of the this, the length of time that you drove and the speed at which you drove. So there's no like, you know, it's all intuitive, so maybe you could have in the same case. Ah, your effort on your productivity is theme, amount of stuff he produced per effort that you put in. And then the results of that is your labor.[1:07:41] Yuta: I think I think we should move on, OK, I mean, let's even let's just be having less and less intuitive. I mean, why, Yeah, that's not really very I mean, you can make up some new concept, but but it's not labour.[1:07:59] Henry: Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think I just kind of, you know, I went along with his trajectory and took it A Z was talking about it, but I agree that it he could have done this better. And he's making a conceptual error to complete those concepts.[1:08:19] Yuta: Yeah, I mean, I definitely I guess I get the idea that, you know, we shouldn't It should be our first move to go with Oh, he's wrong But, yeah, just those defenses I don't agree with.[1:08:35] Henry: So do you think we could just have a Labour prime and say That's what he's talking about? Or do you think he's actually saying something false about labour problem? Even[1:08:43] Yuta: I think he's saying something forth,[1:08:47] Henry: and that's because, what he describes his labor isn't actually what value is,[1:08:56] Yuta: Well, he says Labour. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he says Labour's behind the value of commodities. You know, the quote red so that pretty much exactly. And I think that's wrong. And of course, yuta Cement by Labour, he meant something else than he could be right. But I mean, Labour's labor, you can't just make up your own definitions of words and then be right.[1:09:20] Henry: Yeah. So I guess then, Ah, it could be that were either disagreeing with his definition of labor or were disagreeing with some claim about labor.[1:09:35] Yuta: well,[1:09:37] Henry: so this is back to the definitions are going feeling We're gonna bring this up every single time. E[1:09:44] Yuta: guess it gets a little, you know, model.[1:09:47] Henry: And I find the argument of the definition obviously to be an interesting. So I just sort of accepted that the way he's using it. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about labor[1:09:57] Yuta: way. But that's not way. Oh, no. I just gets even more confusing. The lamer is a word,[1:10:03] Henry: you know, E Yeah, I know. But I find that easier to do when I was reading rather than replace Labour was something else. Every time I thought.[1:10:15] Yuta: I guess you okay, if yeah, maybe this is This makes it clear. if he's right about if he has the right definition flavor, then I would say he's wrong about, you know, equating labor and value. But if he has the right definition or it only have you Yeah. Made up definition than he's right. But also he's not saying anything. I mean, he's not explaining what the value of commodities drives from,[1:10:52] Henry: I guess I might subtly disagree, but that's fine. We can move on.[1:10:57] Yuta: Yeah, but he's an explanation of the value of commodities. Is I'm I mean, if it's a circular definition, that doesn't help, right? You want to bring in something new, that grounds value, and that has some explanatory value. So Labour feels like it. It would, and it would if it were true. But[1:11:21] Henry: right as you're saying, like he's using this word labor as if it was some other concept that he's bringing into the picture. But actually, he's just redefining value to be or redefining Labour to be value. Yeah, and so nothing actually was explained.[1:11:37] Yuta: Yeah, I'm definitely going to read the rest of this, so maybe it'll make things more clear on.[1:11:44] Henry: I got a sense from what we read so far that he was actually talking about something, and that thing, I assumed, was what he meant by labor. Eso. That's why I didn't have as much of a problem with it. But I can see use your position being different.[1:12:02] Yuta: Yeah. Also, I don't know to me. Yeah, the first part. The logical. It's so weird because the first part to me, it just seems like an art. An explanation of why labour isn't what gives value to wealthy society.[1:12:23] Henry: Oh, yeah? And then you completely floats it on time.[1:12:26] Yuta: Yeah. Just example about the poor tribes. Like even. You know, he explicitly says, Like, in poor times, everyone is basically fully employed In rich societies, lots of people are unemployed. but how can that be? I'm in straightforwardly. His explanation seems to explain why. You know, societies with less labor, are wealthier and ideas with basically everyone laboring full time the victim, but yeah. Weaken. We've been circling around this point.[1:13:08] Henry: Yeah. So we've talked about money and we started talking about labour. Is there anything I'll see when it's ah, odd?[1:13:23] Yuta: I think we covered the first. Yeah, the two parts that I am wanted to cover. yeah, I had something, but I've forgetting. Do you have anything final? Teoh?[1:13:42] Henry: There was a section on where he talks about how prices are determined. Do you? Did you go to that part?[1:13:51] Yuta: I don't think so.[1:13:52] Henry: Okay. Yeah. Then Weaken Weaken To do that next time. Yeah, but maybe I could just bring him one last thing about the money Example. So I was trying to get to something, and I want to see what you think of it. so this was the thought experiment is that you have 100 gold coins and 50 of them are stamped right, you know, And it's been decreed by the authority. The only 50 of them are gonna be stamped, but they're not, you know, kept track of it all every moment. So it's possible to counterfeit it if you're able to somehow get a sample. But the factor that I want to consider changing is how much or how hard is it to get a counterfeit stamp? I think that if it's really hard, like, practically impossible, then it would be relatively easy and straightforward to use those stamped gold coins as currency. But if it was basically a Z Z is coming up with your own stamp in your house and that would get you a valid looking stamp, then I think it would be impossible to use them as currency or at least they would be severely devalued. Yeah, so I think that well, it might not be the only factor. I think that it's a very important factor for determining the value of a currency is how easy it is counterfeit.[1:15:22] Yuta: yeah. I mean, I think I agree. I would phrase that as it's an important doctor for allowing something to be a currency, Yeah, but yeah, I think where we are basically making the same point.[1:15:41] Henry: But I think what's interesting about it, which will get to I think what you were trying to say is thought, the purpose of having the stamps in the first place was not to somehow, you know, create it as a currency like there wasn't a concept of thought. Even the purpose was to guarantee that that particular coin had been weighed and measured toe contain a certain amount of the metal inside. Right, That was a 1,000,000 stamp. The stamp was not just an empty signal, like we have allowed this many gold coins like I oppose in my experiment. Ah, but it was, ah, measure of how much actual metal was inside of it. Of a certain you know, purity. Ah, so that while you're trading, you don't have to check that yourself. Yeah. So the real value of the stamp is a convenience E, but it didn't actually, the the Salafist the Value of the stamp the purpose of this stamp. But the value of the currency is still in the metal itself and the labour took to create that matter.[1:16:52] Yuta: I think that Yeah, this is Remember what I was going to bring up? And it's It's about this kind of, so, yeah, where do we think value comes from? I think this is a good final topic. And because it's about what Smith wrote about Banana and explaining what he said. So you So you're saying that the value is in the metal, but not in the stand? Yes. All right.[1:17:22] Henry: Yes. I'm sort of trying to disprove my original thought experiment what was wrong with it.[1:17:27] Yuta: And you're also disagreeing with Adam Smith. B is here and fights the value with labour. Oh, really? Into what you can obtain with the currency.[1:17:41] Henry: well, I thought he I thought I was agreeing with him on this point at least, which was that the value of the currency is the amount of labor that went into producing the metal that goes in the currency.[1:17:53] Yuta: Oh, so wait. Oh, I can I thought, by the values in the metal I thought you meant in the physical metal. No. Oh, so it's OK, OK, that sounds like it's not in the metal. It's an the labor that went into Yeah, I[1:18:13] Henry: guess. I mean, the value of the metal meaning the labour took to get that medal[1:18:19] Yuta: okay on this supplies for everything like[1:18:23] Henry: right. But in certain defined Yeah, like he refers the Scotland again. They would trade and nails, sometimes as currency.[1:18:34] Yuta: But then the[1:18:35] Henry: purpose of it was that it took some labour in order to create the currency and that determines the value of the currency. And you can trade that around Ah, based on the value of labor that went into the currency for other labor.[1:18:50] Yuta: Okay, this is a little bit different from Smith because he makes the distinction, but it's the value of the things you can obtain with the commodity. That's the value of the quantity. And you're saying it's it's the value of or its labor that went into obtaining the actual currency. That's the value of the currency.[1:19:15] Henry: Yeah. Overall, Yes. So that would also incorporate counterfeiting.[1:19:21] Yuta: So but then what if you use something like, what's a seashells? Air. Very Ah, easy to obtain initially. But they're in the limited supply. So there a good commodity, then what? But then, you know, they're rare, so they become extremely valuable. How couldn't you? In that case, he couldn't identify the value of the commodity with labor. Right when[1:19:55] Henry: you say commodity or you're referring to the seashell. Yeah, I think I think you would. I think that because it's a rare it's harder and harder to find new seashells. So requires more labour.[1:20:14] Yuta: yeah. Okay, um[1:20:18] Henry: and because that it's harder to find new seashells, you can make it more expensive to get existing seashells and therefore the existing C cells have more value.[1:20:31] Yuta: Yeah, I guess. I mean, I agree that it went become harder and harder to get, you know, more seashells as they become more scarce. But I think that's not where the value comes from because I mean again, this is just the same point. But just be something is scarce. Doesn't make it valuable.[1:20:53] Henry: Yeah, I guess we haven't really addressed that. I think I need to think about that more. I'm not really putting a lot of good content into interesting that more just random rent rambling, but[1:21:06] Yuta: because there are a lot of hard to obtain things that are worthless,[1:21:11] Henry: right? Exactly. Lots of unique artwork that is not worth anything. Yeah, but in terms of the social thing, I actually I like the way of thinking about this, That so it's think of it in terms of, ah, game that you want to get a seashell, right? You have two options. You can either go and look for a seashell, which is gonna take some amount of effort, or you can buy a social by, you know, trading in some way. So let's say you have another thing that's worth amount like that. You put some effort into getting so you can trade that for a special right. So then you will decide what to do based on how hard it is to find Ah, seashell, and how easy it is or how much labor you know, labor value. It costs to buy a seashell. But it turns out that people selling she sells know how much labor it takes to find a new seasonal. So what they'll do is they will make their seashells as's close to that price as possible. And therefore the seashells have that price. Well,[1:22:26] Yuta: if they didn't have the price, they wouldn't bother to find he[1:22:30] Henry: sells right. Well, if they were price lower than a ah, if they were priced lower than it costs to go find a seashell in terms of labour vaccine, then you would prefer to buy seashells rather than go look for new ones. Right? So they can jack up the price all the way to exactly how much labor costs to go find a new one and they'll get the maximout out of their seashell.[1:22:58] Yuta: Wait, wait. I wouldn't, but okay, if the price of the sea shell for the seller is the price to obtain them and it wouldn't be worth them, they wouldn't make a profit. So it wouldn't be worth the time to find seashells, right? Like the value the money that you get from selling the seashell would have to be higher than the value he spent on obtaining official that's the Prophet[1:23:30] Henry: E. I guess that since it's a currency, you shouldn't be really profiting off of it. I think that it would be a pretty matched market,[1:23:42] Yuta: but not proof. Wall. But then, if it's perfectly not so, then you wouldn't get any new seashells we could. OK, we could do this in terms of Bitcoin lately.[1:23:55] Henry: I mean, that's kind of what we've been talking around the whole time. Yeah,[1:23:59] Yuta: I guess it is kind of like an idealized It's like, Yeah, the platonic ideal of currency. Basically, Yeah. So great. Yeah. Yes. as long as the internet exists So I guess you don't even need the Internet. Probably, But, and he was[1:24:23] Henry: don't need the internet in orderto half that coin. But you do need it in order to mind. Bitcoin.[1:24:28] Yuta: Yeah, Yeah. so late? Yeah, When does someone mine the quee

Today's Questions: 0:45 - Do you work for free? 3:46 - Converting IUL to WL with minimum penalty. 5:35 - Policy performance in a negative interest rate environment. 6:42 - Do I need a bank account? 7:35 - Could a policy be MEC'd when paying back a loan at a higher interest rate? The Q&A series is designed to help you become more knowledgeable in the Infinite Banking Concept®. Email us at James@bankingwithlife.com if you have a question you'd like answered in the series! Make sure to like and subscribe to join us weekly for great content! For Jeff Deist's Article: https://mises.org/wire/negative-interest-rates-are-price-we-pay-de-civilization For information on Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations ━━━ Listen on your iPhone through iTunes: ➫ https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Listen on your Android through Stitcher: ➫ https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/bank... Listen on Soundcloud: ➫ https://soundcloud.com/banking-with-l... ━━━ Learn more about James Neathery here: ➫ https://bankingwithlife.com Learn more about Ryan Griggs here: ➫ https://griggscapitalstrategies.com ━━━ Register for our free webinar to learn more about Infinite Banking... ➫ https://bankingwithlife.com/getting-s... ━━━ Implement the Infinite Banking Concept® with the Infinite Banking Starter Kit... The Starter Kit includes Becoming Your Own Banker by R. Nelson Nash and the Banking With Life DVD by James Neathery. It's the perfect primer for everyone interested in becoming their own banker. Buy yours here: ➫ https://www.bankingwithlife.com/exclu... ━━━ Connect on other social media: ➳ https://www.twitter.com/jamesneathery ➳ https://www.facebook.com/jamescneathery/ ━━━ Disclaimer: All content on this site is for informational purposes only. The content shared is not intended to be a substitute for consultation with the appropriate professional. Opinions expressed herein are solely those of James C. Neathery & Associates, Inc., unless otherwise specifically cited. The data that is presented is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by James C. Neathery & Associates, Inc. as to another party's informational accuracy or completeness. All information or ideas provided should be discussed in detail with your Adviser, Financial Planner, Tax Consultant, Attorney, Investment Adviser or the appropriate professional prior to taking any action.

In this Episode we discuss the 19th-century short story, Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. We consider what it has in common with Orange is the New Black's portrayals of ICE and what particular parallels exist between Bartleby and Peter Gibbons from the 1999 film, Office Space. n.b. from Andrea: I mentioned swearing fealty of naturalization in 2013. It was 2006. In this episode, we utilize the the Norton Anthology of World Literature, 3rd Edition, volume E. Additional References include: Josefina Ludmer's Feminist perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Music: "Fugue in C# Major, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1": J.S. Bach Music Synthesizer and Programming: Shawn P. Russell Sound Consultant and Mixing: Shawn P. Russell Recording and Editing: Rebecca Salois and Andrea Fernandez

This week we're back with part two of chapter eleven of book 1 of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and this one is massive. We're covering what is known as the Digression on Silver, and wondering if you can call something a digression when it's almost 100 pages long. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, come on out and join the Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or you can email me at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

This week we're covering part 1 of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nation Book 1 Chapter 11: Of the Rent of Land, where we discover exactly why the rent is too damn high, and it has more to do with wheat prices than you might think. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, come join our Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or email me directly at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We're back to close out Chapter 10 of Book 1 of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. We cover the inequalities in wages and profits that are occasioned by the policies of Europe. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, join our Facebook group and feel free to leave a comment at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or you can email me at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We're back with another riveting chapter from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, or at least half of a chapter, as this one is really long. In this episode we cover the causes of inequalities in wages and profits as they relate to the natural market forces which cause them. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, come join us on the Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or you can email me at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We keep right on moving through Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations with Book 1 Chapter 7: Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities. In this chapter supply finally meets demand, prices fluctuate, and I can't understand what the deal is with people who don't like chocolate. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, join our Facebook group and leave a comment or suggest a topic for a future episode at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or you can email me at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We're celebrating our one year anniversary by covering Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations Book 1 Chapter 6: Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities. We examine Smith's analysis of the factors that go into determining the price of things and find time to bag on the subject of sociology. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, come on out and join our Facebook group to leave a comment or suggest a topic for a future episode at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or send me an email at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We're back with Book 1 Chapter 5 of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. This week we're talking about Real Price and Nominal Price as Adam Smith describes them as well as what Smith feels is the constant measure of value. It's deep stuff and involves a Karl Marx impersonation. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, join us on the Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or email me at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

We just keep plugging along with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations this week where we are starting to get into more exciting (your concept of excitement may vary) territory with Book 1 Chapter 4: Of the Origins and Use of Money. I walk you through Smith's history of money, from dried cod (yes, for real) to coined money, and offer up some hot takes (about 200 years old) on the core concepts of valuation. If you want to tell me why I'm wrong, join the conversation at our Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/340933856307543/ or email me directly at: okayletmetellyouwhyyourewrong@gmail.com

Continuing with the Econtalk host on the moral aspects of economics, focused by Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments. Should we sacrifice ourselves to the machine of the economy? How does Smith's idea of virtue and talk of the "impartial spectator" line up with economic growth? Listen to part 1 first or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! Learn how to install the Citizen feed on your mobile device.  End song: "Needle Exchange" by Fritz Beer, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #2.