THE MAN WHO REWIRED HOW HUMANITY THINKS ABOUT WEALTH

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ADAM SMITH

Before Smith, the dominant idea was mercantilism, nations hoarding gold, viewing trade as war, strangling commerce with monopolies and tariffs. Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher writing in the 1770s, dismantled this entirely. His argument was radical in its simplicity. He declared that wealth is not gold in a vault, it is the productive labour of people, and it grows when people are free.

His books, "The Wealth of Nations" written in 1776, and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759 did different but complementary work. The Wealth of Nations gave the world the concept of the invisible hand, the idea that individuals pursuing self-interest can, through free markets, produce outcomes that benefit society at large. His famous pin factory opened the book, ten workers dividing tasks could produce 48,000 pins a day versus the twenty a single worker might manage alone. He showed that division of labour is the engine of prosperity. From that insight flows globalisation, supply chains, industrial capitalism, and the whole architecture of the modern economy.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which Smith himself considered his greater work, argued that human society rests on sympathy. Our capacity to feel what others feel. Markets, for Smith, were never separable from morality.

What makes him extraordinary is the nuance history tends to erase. He despised monopolies, he warned constantly that businessmen would conspire to raise prices, he wrote that no society can be called flourishing if the majority of its people are poor.

He gave away much of his income anonymously. The "prophet of capitalism" was, at heart, a moral philosopher asking a simple question, what actually makes human beings flourish? Every economist since Marx, Keynes, and Friedman, began by wrestling with the questions Smith first framed. His 1776 was a different kind of revolution than the American one happening the same year, but arguably the more durable one.

365 men who changed the world.

Kamikun John, Author 366 days of wisdom.