How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

At Hoover's 2014 Fall Retreat, Russell Roberts, the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Hoover and host of the weekly podcast Econtalk, discussed his recently released book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. The book is Roberts’s analysis of Adam Smith’s overlooked philosophical work The Theory of Moral Sentiments, available in full text from the Library of Economics and Liberty.  For his talk, Roberts read excerpts from The Theory of Moral Sentiments and then gave his own humorous yet insightful interpretation of the sometimes convoluted passages, using examples such as the Apple Watch and Angelina Jolie.  Ultimately, Roberts argued, our time is the scarcest resource on the planet, and Smith’s work explains how economics can help us thoughtfully and meaningfully use this resource.