The Wealth of Nations
And it did not take me long to read through it, as I indeed was fascinated by the wise man's wisdom, albeit through the contemporary author's somewhat arbitrary excerpting of cut and paste. His witty interpretation helps, despite all sophomoric jests.
But it took me even sooner to realise how ignorantly wrong it was to think of Adam Smith as all about self-interest. Quite the contrary. It is enlightening to learn that he actually wrote "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" first, in which he explained what morality is and how much it is in man's nature to be interested in the fortune of others.
Perhaps what is most shockingly relevant to our current age of financial fiasco is, quoting P.J.O'Rourke, Adam Smith's "warning against betting too much accumulation and employment of stock on the red-hot housing market":
A dwelling house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant...If it is to be let to a tenant for rent, as the house can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue...Though a house, therefore, may yield revenue to its proprietor...it cannot yield any to the public, nor serve in the function of a capital, and the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it.
How prophetic these words from the wise man were, and how portentous they were of the contemporary subprime mortgage crisis, in fact any crisis of house-price bubbles in history since his time!
But P.J.O'Rourke is correct in suggesting that none of us take the axioms of Adam Smith as givens - even the simple basic principle that economic progress depends on basically the pursuit of self-interest, division of labour and freedom of trade (just witness all the angry anti-WTO protests on TV) - and, for all his ideas' relevance, we quarrel with Adam Smith. Rourke himself wittingly pointed out ample evidence of confusion in Smith's thinking in the areas of price, globalization, taxation, and others to prove his point, no doubt as a pursuit of self-interest - for fame - but rather craftily: "there is an admitted pleasure in watching someone so much more intellectual than oneself going so intellectually wrong."
Playing devil advocate, perhaps O'Rourke is taking Smith's intelligence too seriously. As much as I am fully convicted of the wise man's wisdom, I also cannot help but imagine that a factor to his greatness has to do with the fact that he was the first person to write comprehensively and informatively on the subject before even it was named as such - economics. But history provides ample examples to prove that the first person who started off doing something might not necessarily ended up being the one doing that thing best after all (Tiger Woods is not a Scotsman). Perhaps people are simply nostalgic about their "first" knowledge or recognizable experience of every kind - empire, industrial revolution, management theory, golf, music...as in first love.
And O'Rourke should blog (that is, if he has not already started doing so.) Not only are his quips, jests and waggish comments fanciful for blogging, he is obviously an intelligent man with much to offer if he chooses to do so, as he hinted in his own condescending words: "Freedom of speech is wonderful, if you have anything to say. A search of the blogosphere reveals that hardly anyone does." But as a blog is free for all to read, he may not do it. As in quarreling with Adam Smith, he asked of "gross domestic product" rather cheesily: "I am as grossly domestic as anyone. Where is the product? How come all the goods and services flow out of my income instead of into it?"
As to whether Adam Smith is in heaven or not, O'Rourke should be grateful for running absolutely no risk of being sued for plagiarism, without the slightest chance of falling in the same fate as Steve van der Ark - the guy who wrote a lexicon to Harry Potter.
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