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Hey, you're listening to the partially examined life episode 177 on economics.

We have a Russ Roberts from Icon talk with us last time we talked about the whole vision

of the economy as a machine or as an organism or an ecology got a little more into what

Adam Smith in particular meant about the invisible hand and how that relates to how we talk

now.

So I'm hoping that we can talk a little more about the moral aspects.

We're just talking Russ about the specialization and we made the point in our previous treatment

of the wealth of nations that I think a lot of our complaints about economics are not

so much about the mechanics of wealth generation.

We don't deny the advantages in terms of raising standard of living.

I mean, we got a little bit before into issues involving the poorer countries and inequality.

There are a lot of things one can say, but the basic mechanism seems to have worked very

well for us.

It's the question of sort of what morally does it do to us as people participating in this?

That if everybody becomes a cog in a machine or for a laborer becomes too specialized,

then we become less interesting people, half people, if economic growth is what it's

all about.

Right at the beginning of the wealth, nations, Adam Smith says, yeah, like the wealth of

a nation is going to be determined by the amount of specialization, success, the skill

...