Podcast Episodes

Adam Smith Episode 8: A Nation of Shopkeepers

Season 3 Episode 19

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Smith closes Book IV by dismantling mercantilism through the lens of colonial policy, monopoly, and rent seeking, then weighs physiocracy against the system of natural liberty. We trace…

Published on 5 hours ago

Parts is (Not) Parts: The Life Cycle Problem for Heavy Equipment

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We trace how Alex Schuessler, the once and once-again President of SmartEquip--also a scholar of expressive choice!--built a platform that makes machines more profitable by erasing the …

Published on 1 week ago

Money Killed Barter; Can a Platform Bring It Back?

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We explore why money became the default middleman and how a modern platform can make barter practical by slashing the costs of search, matching, and trust. Founder Jassim Baqer shares t…

Published on 2 weeks, 6 days ago

Adam Smith Episode 7: The Errors of Mercantilism--Bullion, Balances, and Bounties

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Tracing out Adam Smith’s Book IV, chapters 1–6, to show how mercantilism mistakes money for wealth, how protection creates monopolies at home, and why free exchange raises real prosperi…

Published on 1 month ago

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations Episode 6--Division of Land

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We trace how Adam Smith solves a historical puzzle: why Europe’s path to prosperity inverted the “natural order,” and how commerce quietly dissolved feudal power to make room for libert…

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago

Little's Law: The Transaction Costs of (Re)Drawing Lines

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A conversation with Andrew Wagner, production and manufacturing engineer, now in aerospace, but with experience also in the auto industry.

We trace how transaction costs shape production…

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: Episode 5--The Text of Book II

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This episode explores Book 2 of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, focusing on his revolutionary concept of the "division of stock" and how capital accumulation drives economic growth.

• Sm…

Published on 3 months ago

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: Episode 4--Capital and Book II: Introduction

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Book Two of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" provides the conceptual foundation for understanding how commercial society sustains growth through capital accumulation and the employm…

Published on 3 months, 1 week ago

The Innovation is the Exchange Itself!

Season 3 Episode 24

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Chris Cornette, a longtime securities trader who grew up in the business, reveals how the most important innovation that made US capital markets preeminent in the world was the exchange…

Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago

When Bribes Become the System: Understanding Lock-In

Season 3 Episode 22

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Corruption persists not because people like it, but because it becomes embedded in the incentive structure of the state, creating feedback loops that reinforce themselves and resist ref…

Published on 4 months ago