{"id":279,"date":"2010-12-12T00:38:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T04:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/?p=279"},"modified":"2010-12-12T00:38:50","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T04:38:50","slug":"adam-smith-isnt-that-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"Adam Smith: Isn’t that Special!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction
\n<\/strong>Adam Smith lived from 1723 to 1790 and is widely regarded as the father of economics.\u00a0 He was a Scottish moral philosopher and taught at the University of Glasgow.\u00a0 His masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776.\u00a0 This book is considered a seminal work in the field of Economics.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Markets and Specialization
\n<\/strong>The ability to specialize is seriously constrained by the availability of market.\u00a0 A woman who sets up a law firm in a tiny Kentucky town would not to be able to support herself by specializing in a particular form of law for which the town provided little demand.\u00a0 She would have to be a generalist who could find sufficient customers among the available market to make a living.\u00a0 In the last 30 years, substantial markets have opened up around the world, offering great opportunity for many kinds of goods.\u00a0 Many Americans advocate a protectionist posture with a hope of protecting American jobs.\u00a0 This posture ignores the benefit of wider markets.\u00a0\u00a0 A bigger market always means more opportunity for companies that have something unique to sell.\u00a0 Protectionism limits the ability of US businesses to serve these global customers because of barriers erected against foreign-made commodities.<\/p>\n

My company makes a highly engineered component needed in modern industrial equipment.\u00a0 It replaces a much cheaper but less functional component which has become a commodity.\u00a0\u00a0 Some people complain that global markets hurt local businesses because of cheaper labor.\u00a0 Adam Smith observes that varying labor costs and resources have always played a part in where products are made.\u00a0 The fact that we have a highly differentiated product and can sell into a global market makes it possible for us to build our products in the United States.\u00a0 If we were trying to compete for the commodity business, our factory would be nothing but an empty building.<\/p>\n

I did most of my reading in The Wealth of Nations using a free audio book<\/a> from LearnOutLoud.com.\u00a0 The free audio edition by Michael Edwards is very well done and made the book much more approachable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction Adam Smith lived from 1723 to 1790 and is widely regarded as the father of economics.\u00a0 He was a Scottish moral philosopher and taught at the University of Glasgow.\u00a0 His masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}