Russ Roberts

How Adam Smith can change your life

  • The theory of moral sentiments
  • We can balance our caring about ourselves against some acts of selflessness
    • The impartial spectator
  • Humans desire to be loved and to be lovely
    • Want to both be praised and be worthy of that praise.
    • If you haven’t earned the appreciation, it both is praise for a different person (I didn’t do it) and reminds us of what we could have done
  • Life is full of choices that pit what we want against what an impartial spectator would say is right. How much are we willing to give up to be lovely
    • We often deceive the impartial spectator, especially in the moment
    • We avoid situations where we have to confront our shortcomings
    • We often couch decisions in selflessness to fool ourselves into thinking we are lovely. Confirmation bias
    • The world is full of dots. Connect then and you can draw anything. What matters is the ones you ignore
  • The rat race is run by rats
    • How do you reconcile our clear desire for money and fame with knowledge it doesn’t make it happier
    • Plutarch: conquer and conquer and conquers then relax. Or just relax
    • MBA trying to convince a content Mexican Fisher to expand so he can move to a coastal village in retirement
  • We are fascinated and exhilarated by fame bc we live vicariously through them and the near perfect life we imagine them to live
    • They get attention no matter whether they deserve it, which is nicr
    • But they give up leisure, work hard, etc
    • Outpouring of grief at the death of famous people is bc we imagine them to deserve a better fate
  • Fame and power and money is a glitzy way to be loved, but wisdom and virtue is the true path
  • How to be virtuous
    • Be appropriate so others know how to interact with you and vice versa
    • People try to match their emotional response so the giver and receiver match
  • Your vote doesn’t matter in cost benefit analysis. But categorical imperative. It would be wrong not to.
  • The world is complex and trying to control it too much is futile. It’s like trying to move pieces around a chess board, but each chess piece has its own natural movement
    • Dictators try to move people and society as if it were chess pieces, ignoring the natural movement of society, which causes huge problems
  • Even when we are right it is sometimes better to leave people or society alone bc we can’t predict the complex system and its consequences
  • We have a drive for greatness in us. That can be great for society but had for the individual
  • The poorest people today are so bc they are connected to so few people economically
    • Specialization and scale is what enables prosperity
  • Theory of moral sentiments is about the people around you. The wealth of nations is about the world of impersonal exchange
    • It’s a consistent view of how humans actually behave in two different spheres of life
    • In markets we need trade so we need specialization so we need impersonality
  • [[Comparative Advantage & Specialization]]
  • [[Walk in their shoes]]
  • [[Veil of Ignorance]]