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Robin Sloan
Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan is an American author known for his unique narrative style and insightful observations on technological and cultural changes. Born in December 1979, his works have gained widespread acclaim for their blend of literature, technology, and culture. more

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“Honoring the value of competence and steadfastness requires a generosity of spirit and a curbing of the passion for envy, traits that few people value and fewer still cultivate and acquire. Not until there is more of Smith and less of Hobbes in the human heart, will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim”

LibertyEconomicsEnvyCoercionAdam SmithThomas Hobbes
Book:Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted
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“(...) his (Adam Smith's) theory of sympathy rejected self-love as the basic motive for behaviour. He also defined virtue as consisting of three elements: propriety, prudence and benevolence. By this he meant propriety or the appropriate control and directing of our affections; prudence or the judicious pursuit of our private interests; and benevolence or the exercise of only those affections that encourage the happiness of others. How poor Adam Smith got stuck with disciples like the market economists and the neo-conservatives is hard to imagine. He is in profound disagreement with their view of society. (V - From Ideology Towards Equilibrium)”

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Book:The Unconscious Civilization
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“Yet economics purports to be strangely exempt from this fact of life. From Adam Smith's day to our own, the chief concern of the discipline has been to render economic events unsurprising...The discernment of orderly rules governing the apparent chaos of life was a remarkable achievement and continues to amaze.”

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Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
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“Throughout this book I have tried to point out why interest, especially as it has been used by people such as Hume, Smith, Tocqueville, and Weber, is still a very useful concept. One reason why the concept of interest imparts a distinct dynamic to the analysis is that it is mainly interest which makes people takes action. It supplies the force that makes people get up at dawn and work very hard throughout the day. Combined with interests of others, it is a force that can move mountains and create new societies.”

InterestAdam SmithDavid HumeEconomic SociologyMax WeberAlexis De Tocqueville
Book:Principles of Economic Sociology
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“As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith’s basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels. For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith’s scheme. But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in the use of given technology. Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image building and advertising.”

CapitalismCompetitionProfitAdvertisingPropagandaPublic RelationsAdam SmithEcomics
Book:Economics: The User's Guide
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“However appealing it may be in theory, the benevolent design of Nature rarely works out in practice, requiring intellectual acrobatics on the part of those who invoke it. [Adam] Smith recognizes that a healthy economic circulatory system depends on some government interference. Complete freedom leads to monopolies, giving manufacturers outsize power over prices and politicians, which works to the detriment of the body politic. How to account for monopolies while maintaining an ideal of naturalness? Just call them unnatural. Monopolists, writes Smith, are guilty of selling their commodities "much above the natural price." To regulate them is to force them into accordance with nature—even though monopolies themselves naturally emerge in unregulated economies.”

EconomicsNatural LawInvisible HandAdam Smith
Book:Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science
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