Monday, 16 June 2014

Many Happy Returns of the Day, Adam Smith!

Who on earth is Adam Smith? He was an economist and he wrote, by far, the best book about economics, The Wealth of  Nations. A simple but focused book about the mechanisms and interrelations between money/wealth and people.
Incidentally we share the same birthday, just incidentally :).
I read economics books for the same pleasure that fairy tales give me..They are both realistic.
Fairy tales because the stories are the same with everyday life, you make a mistake, you pay and have to travel all over kingdoms to find the lost love of the prince (aren't we all trying to find our love?)...or the prince gives a piece of his calf (part of the leg) as payment for the Ogre (Witch, Bird) to be crossed over to the other realm..we sacrifice a lot for our desires and we deeply yearn for the other "realm"and..... the simplest metaphor of love, if you kiss a frog it becomes a prince, your prince.
In economics there is a magic place where the Offer meets the Demand  which gives the price of it. "There is a price for everything".
Adam Smith spoke of the Invisible Hand, metaphor or not, that is self regulation of the markets, without the intervention of the (sur)realistic State.
Utopian, but 90% realistic because we must admit we are but at a far cry (far away) from the first Utopia ever mention in fiction, the island of the Phaeacians (Ulysses).
Many Happy Returns of the Day, Adam Smith!

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