Henry, this is a minor quibble, but it would help at least me, and perhaps some others of your readers, if you included the first name of the person you are writing about, in addition to the (extremely common, in this case) last name. It took me until about half way through this piece before I realized you were talking about Adam Smith. Thank you!
So too do other forms of intangible capital building. A musician's performance lasts but an hour, but a composition can give pleasure for centuries. And of course modern technology gives us more and more forms of intangible capital that may be accumulated: not only recordings of performances, but software and social systems that do not necessarily rely on any one physical object, but make many such objects more useful.
From the view of ~250 years later, Smith's analysis feels like it's missing something (of course this is hardly a criticism of Smith!).
As the menswear guy will tell us, fancy costumes and jewels are 'consumed' by the people who see them as well as those who wear them. People like to dress up, and see other people dress up, and Halloween costumes have positive externalities!
And demand for gold will cause people to find new sources of gold, and to learn gold-making skills.
Henry, this is a minor quibble, but it would help at least me, and perhaps some others of your readers, if you included the first name of the person you are writing about, in addition to the (extremely common, in this case) last name. It took me until about half way through this piece before I realized you were talking about Adam Smith. Thank you!
Smith's life and work appear to refute his own assertion that "men of letters of all kinds" are unproductive. Writing has enormous power.
So too do other forms of intangible capital building. A musician's performance lasts but an hour, but a composition can give pleasure for centuries. And of course modern technology gives us more and more forms of intangible capital that may be accumulated: not only recordings of performances, but software and social systems that do not necessarily rely on any one physical object, but make many such objects more useful.
From the view of ~250 years later, Smith's analysis feels like it's missing something (of course this is hardly a criticism of Smith!).
As the menswear guy will tell us, fancy costumes and jewels are 'consumed' by the people who see them as well as those who wear them. People like to dress up, and see other people dress up, and Halloween costumes have positive externalities!
And demand for gold will cause people to find new sources of gold, and to learn gold-making skills.