John Stepek

speaker

2,659 appearances 29 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard yesterday

John Stepek’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 29 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 7.

Appearances

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Merryn Talks Money · Live from Fringe: What Adam Smith Can Teach Investors About AI and Investing · 2 Sep 2026 podcast

Um and I like it for two main reasons. matched

So the first reason is that matched

I think it shows how Adam Smith thinks. matched

Um, you know, the other kind of like big economic thinkers who I immediately think of at least are kind of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. matched

And one thing I would say about both of them is I feel that they're kind of top down thinkers. matched

So Marx kind of thinks of it like people as classes and big groups rather than individuals. matched

And Keynes was kind of trying to figure out how to make everything match up like a matched

almost like a chemistry set um and thinking of the economy as a machine. matched

Whereas Smith is starting from the bottom up, he's starting from people and thinking about right well well how do people respond to things? matched

And they respond to incentives. matched

Um and the the questi the where he's talking about the man in his system here is he's talking about someone who thinks that if you impose a system from the top down, and if you can just get everyone to do exactly what you want them to do, then everything will be fine and everything will work out. matched

And I think that matched

The reason that that's so relevant to today is because I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about well why do our politicians seem to be so incapable of thinking about second order consequences? matched

So like well what happens whenever they pass a law and why does it not match up to what they expect? matched

And it's basically because that's these are the people who we are run by. matched

We are run by men and women of system. matched

Um and I mean matched

Can I good examples include matched

Example, we've talked about youth unemployment in the UK an awful lot recently. matched

You must all have heard about, you know, we've got a million nates. matched

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