#91: How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life With Russ Roberts

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2014

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

We all are familiar with Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations. It gave us the "invisible hand" and basically created the field of economics. But did you know he wrote a book before the Wealth of Nations on how to live a virtuous and good life? It's called the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the insights Smith makes in it can change your life for the better. I talk to economist Russ Roberts, author of the book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, about what we can learn from the Father of Economics on living the "good life." We discuss what Smith thinks we need to do to be truly happy, how the "impartial observers" in all of us can guide to us be better, why fame isn't all that great, and why we continue to buy new iPhones even though we know the excitement of owning it will wear off in about week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Red Mikae here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.
0:18.8	Well all of us know or probably should know who Adam Smith is.
0:22.1	He is the Scottish Enlightenment economist who wrote the Wealth of Nations who made famous
0:27.6	the idea of the visible hand in the markets and talked about the butcher and the brewer
0:31.4	and the baker and all that stuff.
0:33.3	Anyways, before he wrote the Wealth of Nations, he wrote a book called The Theory of Moral
0:38.0	Sentiments.
0:39.0	That's not really about economics, it's about how to live a good life and how to maneuver
0:44.4	and manage the relationships that are closest to us, like family and community and the
0:49.6	like.
0:50.6	And the goal is to live a good and virtuous life.
0:53.4	That's what he's trying to explore in the theory of moral sentiments.
0:56.0	Our guest today has written a book about this little known book of Adam Smith.
1:01.0	His name is Russ Roberts and his book is How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life.
1:04.6	Russ is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
1:08.5	He's also the host of the podcast, Econ Talk.
1:12.0	And in today's episode, we're going to talk about what Adam Smith can teach us about
1:17.0	living the good life, how to live a good and virtuous life and how insights from 300 years
1:23.6	ago from an economist, the first economist, can teach us about how to live a good life
1:29.4	now.
1:30.4	Why celebrity culture is bad for the soul, why we often deceive ourselves in our goodness
1:36.4	and how that can get in the way of our moral progress.
	...

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