This TED Talk features author Robert Newark, recorded live at TED Global 2017.

So what I'm doing is a thought experiment.

Now, you may know of or have read this book by this guy.

It's probably the first and maybe the only bestseller

ever written about economics.

And you probably know a bit about what it says.

It talks about how nations all over the world

will prosper through the individual pursuit

of individual profit. Individual profit will be the

mechanism for the prosperity of the world. But the funny thing about Adam Smith is that he was a

stay-at-home kind of guy. He actually never went further from Edinburgh than France and Switzerland.

So my thought experiment is to imagine what would have happened

if Adam Smith had visited Africa.

And fortunately, there's actually an easy answer

because the Arab lawyer and traveler, Ibn Batuta,

traveled down the east coast of Africa in the 14th century.

And what he found when he got to Mogadishu was a market,

and he wrote about it.

And basically, merchant ships came to the harbor,

and they weren't even allowed to land. They had to drop anchor in the harbor, and boats came out

to them, and locals picked them and said, you are my guest, I am now your broker. And they had to

do business through the local broker. And if they went around that

...