A few years back, Russ Roberts, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, co-produced a viral video which portrayed a rap battle between economists John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek.
It’s an amazingly well-crafted seven and a half minutes. Getting your economic knowledge from it is rather like getting advice on moral philosophy from the man who understood how nations get rich more than anyone else — that is, surprisingly effective.
Poor Adam Smith is known mostly for “The Wealth of Nations.” It’s a classic, albeit one that today is mostly written about, rather than read. Smith’s other work published in his lifetime was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” It has been ignored. Even Mr. Roberts notes that he took years and years to tackle it, due to its 18th-century style and its seemingly irrelevant subject matter. What would Mr. Invisible Hand have to say about how human beings should live anyway? Shouldn’t he stick with detailing the specialization of the butcher and the baker? No.
Within “How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness” (Portfolio, $27.95), Mr. Roberts convincingly demonstrates that Smith had a lot more insights to offer than ones about trade. Smith believed we act good when we consider an “impartial spectator” — the conscience — watching. Smith, via Mr. Roberts’ introduction, argued that the gentle coercion of human society and good manners often smooths down our rough edges.
Mankind is that paradox of selfishness and myopia, yet “there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others...though he derives nothing from the pleasure of seeing it.”
Among other oddly specific tips from Adam Smith; fancy gadgets. Mr. Roberts notes that in the economic philosopher’s day that was perhaps a nail clipper. Today it’s an IPad. These are all distractions with limited, albeit understandably appealing use. Riches, or working yourself to death is overrated, as is the fawning esteem of the public. Adam Smith argues that if we’re admired for things we didn’t earn, or in ways we don’t deserve to be, we know it and it bothers us if we have an honest core.
Mr. Roberts writes that Adam Smith saw “that people are fundamentally self-interested, which is not the same thing as being selfish.” Or, to put it another way, economic exchange is just a variation — another sphere of humanity. One can care about and attempt to dissect the mechanisms of both without any contradictions.
Throughout the book, Mr. Roberts uses accessibly short block quotes from Adam Smith, and then sometimes over explains them to redundant effect. But he writes in anecdotal prose that is friendly, easy, and only rarely overly gentle — are modern readers not supposed to know the meaning of “coxcomb”?
Mr. Roberts also has just a few directly economic points to make, and fewer still that are truly ideological. In the final two chapters, “How Not to Make the World a Better Place” and “How to Live in the Modern World,” Mr. Roberts finally gets a bit political. He spends several pages mentioning the good-intentioned disaster that is the prohibition of drugs.
Mr. Roberts ends the book advocating for a world without grand engineers of social order because humans can mostly manage this thing on their own terms. Sure, there’s lots of tweaking and minor adjustments to be made, but they must be made in the millions of tiny, everyday interactions that cannot be planned.
Adam Smith was clever, but what the reader is expected to do with the man’s not-so-archaic wisdom is another question. The title is a tall order — suggesting a rejuvenated sense of being if you follow Adam Smith’s 250-year-old tips for living. This is not quite a self-help book, nor it is deep philosophy or in-depth biography.
Yet, it offers some true hints at human happiness that are available to us all. More to the point for those not entirely ready to change, it works as a brisk walk through good advice for life, and an introduction to two good men.
Readers get to know Adam Smith, and they get to know Mr. Roberts in equal measure. Both come off as someone to drink a beer with. Both are kindly, thoughtful, insightful and modest. This feels like ephemeral praise, but it is somehow the most sincere summation of this little book.
Lucy Steigerwald is a writer living in Eighty-Four, Pa.
First Published: December 7, 2014, 5:00 a.m.
