The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library)

"The Wealth of Nations" is famously compared to the Bible: much cited, little read, and therefore much misinterpreted. The real reason why "Wealth of Nations" doesn't fit with our times is because it's, at heart, a philosophical book. Smith doesn't deduce, say, the negative impact of tariffs STRICTLY (key word) through data, but through the intuitive impact. Much of the book's arguments come from Smith's thoughts, from the real vs. nominal value of money, the relative wealth of various classes, taxes, and monopolies. There are, indeed, chapters just full of data, but the power of the book comes from logic. And what logic spills from his pen. From the introduction alone, you know Smith loved reading and writing. It's clear, for him, the thought, the idea, was a portal to beauty. He writes some of the most beautiful, complex sentences I've read in literature, and some of these sentences are illuminating. And that is why hardly anyone reads this book: it's hard to keep up with his thought and verbosity. This is among the most difficult books I've read in my life, among Wittgenstein's Tractatus and, goodness me, Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. But if you stick with Smith, you find he isn't speaking strictly of economics: he is discussing people. At the heart of "Wealth of Nations" is a commitment to the people of society, our neighbors, our poor, to ensure that they are fed and are given progress in their lives and an opportunity to elevate their children to a better status than that which they had lived. This no better exemplified than Smith's discussion on the burghers of the Hanseatic League versus the wealth-inheriting aristocrats. Smith's love for the burghers comes from their sole virtue: that of their ability to save money. They toil the soil, improve their property and their skills little by little, thus saving money to improve their stock so that the next generation has more, even if it's just a little. The burghers' desire to brave life and improve their condition, even if that condition is crude, is the seed for democracy and liberty. So yeah, I love this book, and I wish more people read it. Arguably, though, the weakest part is Smith's discussion on education, whose conclusions seemed ill-founded.