How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

Good and Fast. Enjoyed the writing.

• Smith tells his readers what the good life is and how to achieve it.
• The failure of economists to anticipate the Great Recession, to agree on how to get out of it, or to predict the path of the recovery should humble all economists.
• Economics helps you understand that money isn't the only thing that matters in life. Economics teachers you that making a choice means giving up something.
• If you want to make good choices, you have to understand yourself and those around you.
• I always encourage students to address their employers self-love and not just their humanity – come up with some reason XYZ will benefit from hiring them.
• The idea that other people care about themselves is generally a good thing to remember if you want them to do something for you in return.
• Yes, you are profoundly self-interested. But for some reason, you do not always act in what appears to be your self-interest. Smiths answer is that our behavior is driven by an imaginary interaction with what he calls the impartial spectator. It is this figure we answer to when we consider what is moral or right.
• For happiness, being loved and actually being worthy of that love (being lovely) is the ideal
• "The man who applauds us either for the actions which we did not perform, or for motives which has no sort of influence upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another person. We can derive no sort of satisfaction from his praises." Adam Smith
• To be loved without being lovely – to be praised without being praise-worthy – is a temptation for the weak and foolish person.
• Self-deception can be more comforting that self-knowledge.

• It is simple to be happy: You need to be loved and to be lovely (worthy of love). You need to be respected and respectable. Praised and praiseworthy. You need to matter to other people, and you need for their image of you to be the real you – you need to earn respect, honor, and admiration honestly.

  There are two ways to be loved. You can be rich and famous or you can be wise and virtuous. Choose the second way. Be lovely.

• Match your responses to the expectations of those around you.
• One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received is to hold your anger for a day before you think of acting on it.
• Virtue is prudence, justice and beneficence. Prudence = taking care of yourself Justice = not hurting others Beneficence = being good to others
• "Say little, do much"
• Thinking clearly about the complex interaction of individual actions that lead to unintended patterns of predictable and orderly outcomes is the single deepest contribution of economics to understanding how the world works.
• Being a troll corrodes your soul.
• Smiths vision of what sustains civilization is the stream of approval and disapproval we all provide as we respond to the conduct of those around us. That stream of approval and disapproval creates feedback loops to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. Each action we take affects those around us. The ripples continue outward as we influence others and as they in turn influence those in their circles.
• We tried buying local once: it was called the Dark ages. When you trade mostly with people who live nearby, you are bound to be very poor. There just isn't enough specialization possible with a limited set of trading partners. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty.
• Love locally, trade globally.