Celebrating Adam Smith
From HES member, Anthony Brewer, this note was posted to the HES list yesterday.
Members of this list may like to know that Adam Smith's picture will in future appear on the Bank of England twenty pound note, replacing EdwardElgar (the composer, not the publisher). He is apparently the firstScotsman (and perhaps the first economist?) to appear on a Bank of Englandnote. He is already pictured on a Scottish note.
See
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/news/2006/097.htm
Stumbling and Mumbling argues we shouldn't celebrate such "stupidity". Adam Smith's Lost Legacy responds. I would add that relying overly on the pin factory example -- which Smith tells us is a "trifling" example -- gives a distorted notion of the division of labour in Smith. Instead of serving to isolate men in narrowly-defined menial tasks, in the main the division of labour is a phenomenon of cooperation and innovation.
