Is The Wealth of Nations still relevant to economics today and worth a read?

>No, Pinochet's reign doesn't count. He gave a couple of classes in Chile during his mandate, but Pinochet ignored his theories.

So you're saying it wasn't REAL Friedman economics, but something different.

Gee, where did I hear that specific flavour of excuse before?

The Chilean economists who implemented the shittacular horror-show studied at UC under Friedman.

>It also dispels Marx. Hard. His theories on division of labor, the concept of wages based on importance of the employee's functions, and the freedom of competition, including exports and imports, mark what is absolutely necessary for the generation of prosperity and progress. No contest.
The central death drive of capitalism (i.e. the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) is present in Smith's analysis of capitalism. Smith's analysis was based on a crude labour theory but it was enough for him to understand that the organic composition of capital must naturally rise and therefore profitability must decline as a result under laissez faire conditions.

marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm
From Book I:
>The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this ease into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall

That's silly. Marx presupposes that the reader is already familiar with basic economics while Adam Smith starts from the ground up. Therefore Marx in no way supersedes Smith. Complement if you wish.

>the application of Smith's theories

What. Smith describes and explains. He rarely prescribes and when he does it's basic stuff far removed from the complex form of neo-Keynesianism currently favored by national governments

>So you're saying it wasn't REAL Friedman economics, but something different.
No. I'm saying that, while Chicago school economists did work under his regime, said regime, being a military one, didn't allow an application of the Chicago school theories as intended. Only a section of it. And in Friedman's words, even this caused improvements:
youtube.com/watch?v=dzgMNLtLJ2k

I don't get why laymen always want to learn economics

>Marx presupposes that the reader is already familiar with basic economics while Adam Smith starts from the ground up
Marx starts with the most absract (the commodity) to get to the most specific, i.e. the particular capitalist

Did you read book 5? It's filled with all kinds of policy advice, I remember he advocates land value taxation and to make sure critical infrastructure doesn't fall into rentier hands. Also no government has serious implemented any form of "neo-Keynesian" policies since monetarism became orthodoxy (except maybe China but that's questionable)

>EU

wut, the EU is extremely conservative and has chosen austerity to keep the creditor class appeased... neo-Keynesian means you don't give no worries about potential inflation and go all in for massive state infrastructure investments and run expansionary monetary policies to accomplish full employment

you are a fucking clown. If you think Smith dispels Marx then i would be surprised if you had read either of them. smithian economic categories had to be abandoned because marx had superseded them and turned them against capitalism

Friedman is just an apologist, a hired prizefighter of the bourgeiosie

>you are a fucking clown
Says the zealot spouting slogans.

I've read The Wealth of Nations, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

Smith is all about unequal distribution of wealth based on the importance and complexity of your role in a distributed labor scheme, and the freedom of competition (or more like the opposite interpretation: the negation of intervention) needed in order to impulse progress and thus better serve the final consumer.

Marx, on the other hand, is all about equal distribution of wealth despite your labor role, and heavy intervention when it comes to how the workers are allowed to exchange their products, not to serve the consumer, but to spite and destroy this bourgeoisie you yourself are talking about like an enemy. Because marxism is a concept rooted on envy.

Friedman was not an apologist. He was a Smith idolater, who translated Smiths theories to an economy that takes globalization and previous attempts at failed models into consideration.

I know you haven't read or understood Capital because it is primarily an analytical text. its merits and similarities vis a vis Smith are about value theory, circulation of capital, nature of capital in the production process.
your sophism is showing if you think that what we should take from the books is why capitalism should exist rather than how it functions. The use of smith as a weapon against socialism is also telling, his arguments were against a mercantile theory of economics, to use them as a battering ram against socialist planning is ahistorical

If you're interested in a good read with a lot of strong insights that were before their time, Wealth of Nations is it, but if you want to actually learn about modern economics you won't get anywhere without reading textbooks and journals.

>No, Pinochet's reign doesn't count.
Pinochet is the example of Friedman's principles par excellence. You wouldn't have any other examples in S America if you claim Pinochet as not really Friedman (which in turn means it never happened).

>worth the time? No.
Is there a good, modern abridged version? What parts/chapters are worth our while. (Serious question)

Spot on.

Pinochet might of been a dictator

but communism under the soviet union killed A HECK OF A LOT MORE PEOPLE

And today Chile is the third richest country in the Americas.

Thanks Pinochet.

By the way how are Cuba and Venezuela doing these days?

>might of

>communism under the soviet union killed A HECK OF A LOT MORE PEOPLE
has nothing to do with marx

I highly doubt you have actually read Smith, Marx or Friedman. The object of analysis of classical political economy was the production of value and accumulation of capital... Smiths break with the mercantilists was he plainly was able to mark off profit from rent as a class income uniquely associated with the use of fixed capital in the employment of wage labour.
Friedman has no connection to the Smithian tradition of political economy. Neoclassical economics was a complete radical break with classical political economy and a retreat back into 17th century subjectivist notions of value analysis which focused on exchanges of commodities instead of capital accumulation.

>and a retreat back into 17th century subjectivist notions of value analysis which focused on exchanges of commodities instead of capital accumulation.
i second this

If you want education in history of Economy, sure.

The usual approach is to go over literature in reverse chronological order and leave The Wealth of Nations for last.

Also jesus fuck Veeky Forums is full of idiots. I feel better for ignoring this board most of the time.

>but pinochet ignored his theories
Im chilean and this triggered me so hard I can't even begin to say how wrong you are.

What does Veeky Forums think of Chydenius?

Was this book actually decent or just a meme?

Given how quickly it has lost relevance I'm inclined to believe it was overhyped

So was Pinochet a Chicago school guy or not?

It's 3rd by GDP per capita too and oh look all the ones at the top of tax havens. The real jewel of S. America is Argentina and that got so badly screwed over by Friedman shit it still hasn't recovered.

Economics as it is practiced today is kind of a big old meme.

I recommend reading at least an internediate macro and intermediate micro text (hopefully more) for a foundation, then diving into the history of economic thought and the wealth of criticisms of mainstream economics.

I think the textbooks are extremely important because it empowers you to decide for yourself whether there is memery going on. But you need to keep in mind that if you only cover a few intermediate texts, you are not at the frontier of the field, so your criticism won't always be well-placed. Sample some papers if you can.

It wasn't even relevant in 1776. Every idea of his that has any worth was already put forward by Turgot and Cantillon, and even before them by the spanish scholastics.
Any idea of his that was unique wasn't only wrong, but was refuted before him, and set economics back by 100 years, eg the labour theory of value.

t. Mises

None of those earlier economists understood that investment in fixed capital marked off industrialists as manufacturers rather than mere merchants or rentiers. Smith was the first to really grasp the truths of the class nature of incomes that was emerging at the very beginning of the industrial revolution.

Actually Marxism-Leninism is an invincible science that cannot be proven wrong or become obsolete.

Smith was completely oblivious to industrialists. Which passages show a grasp of truth of the class nature of incomes?