Good Day citizens and welcome to what would Jefferson do.

Our weekly opportunity to discuss current American events

with President Thomas Jefferson. Good day to you sir.

Good day to you, citizen.

Mr. Jefferson, I know books were a very big part of your life.

You had extensive libraries during your life,

and there's one book that I know you had in your life.

And there's one book that I know you had in your library,

and that would be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

Could you tell me about why this book was so important to you?

Yes, well, it was published at the time of the revolution.

It was really the first economics text

systematically produced by anybody at any time.

And Smith believed in free trade.

He believed that one country has something in surplus that it can't entirely consume. So it then offers

it to some other trade partner and that trade partner needs that but has a surplus of something else.

And so by this exchange, we create a global economy and everyone gets what they need but not everything has to be

produced in a single county or a single parish or even a single nation. So that is

one of the things that Adam Smith taught us the other is that where this is really an extraordinary phenomenon where there is a perceived need

there almost inevitably becomes a service provider.

So if there's a need for a certain type of fence,

and people can't make that on their own,

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