Glory Liu

And we'll hear how this interpretation of Smith is often quite wrong.

As much as that might have been efficient in terms of allocation, it was horrible from the perspective of human welfare.

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

The initial reception of the theory of moral sentiments was quite warm.

That's Glory Liu, a political scientist and Smith scholar.

The initial reviews in London magazines, as well as in the United States, are praising Smith for the beauty of his writing.

Yes.

Yeah.

Adam Smith and David Hume are best friends.

It's very cute.

So one of my favorite lines in The Wealth of Nations is from the very last paragraph.

This is where Smith is giving his withering last remarks on the British Empire.

It's clear that he thinks that the colonial projects, both in the Americas as well as other parts of the British Empire, in Bengal, are a loss.

They are a huge financial drain.

So the important thing in the founding era is that Smith is important as like a very technical resource, but he hasn't quite obtained that halo around him yet.

He's not like Adam Smith-like.

the father of all gifts and the markets and people like genuflect when they hear his name.

He's well known, but he hasn't acquired that intellectual authority yet.

Absolutely.

That's a great way of describing it.