Interestingly, I think this is pretty obviously stated in The Wealth of Nations; Chapter 1 identifies division of labor as the cause of capital accumulation, Chapter 2 identifies trade as the cause of division of labor, and Chapter 3 identifies the size of the market as a limiter on specialization.
This is… actually sort of surprising that now I have two examples of economic concepts which are really better explained by Adam Smith than they are by modern textbooks (the other is supply and demand), and this makes me even more glad that I read The Wealth of Nations in high school before I had come across any modern textbooks.
FWIW I read quite a bit of The Wealth of Nations some years back, then gave it up as a waste of time since (a) modern textbooks would probably explain it better (I assumed), and (b) (more importantly) a lot of W of N must be wrong, and I won’t know which bits to skip or disbelieve, so better just to read a modern summary of the important bits.
Interestingly, I think this is pretty obviously stated in The Wealth of Nations; Chapter 1 identifies division of labor as the cause of capital accumulation, Chapter 2 identifies trade as the cause of division of labor, and Chapter 3 identifies the size of the market as a limiter on specialization.
This is… actually sort of surprising that now I have two examples of economic concepts which are really better explained by Adam Smith than they are by modern textbooks (the other is supply and demand), and this makes me even more glad that I read The Wealth of Nations in high school before I had come across any modern textbooks.
FWIW I read quite a bit of The Wealth of Nations some years back, then gave it up as a waste of time since (a) modern textbooks would probably explain it better (I assumed), and (b) (more importantly) a lot of W of N must be wrong, and I won’t know which bits to skip or disbelieve, so better just to read a modern summary of the important bits.