Oct 14– From "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1776) edited by C. J. Bullock PHD

 Remember when computer games came in big boxes to hold the discs and manuals?

Oct 14– From The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776) edited by C. J. Bullock PHD

Summary: The history of colonization.

Commentary: Eliot really loved Columbus, apparently. He had a Columbus reading towards the end of last week, and now an about Columbus reading. I know it's around Columbus Day, but there weren't several readings clustered around President's Day/Washington's Birthday or something.

The most interesting part is here:

But, among the ancient Romans, the lands of the rich were all cultivated by slaves, who wrought under an overseer, who was likewise a slave; so that a poor freeman had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as a labourer. All trades and manufactures too, even the retail trade, were carried on by the slaves of the rich for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, authority, and protection made it difficult for a poor freeman to maintain the competition against them. The citizens, therefore, who had no land, had scarce any other means of subsistence but the bounties of the candidates at the annual elections. The tribunes, when they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put them in mind of the ancient division of lands, and represented that law which restricted this sort of private property as the fundamental law of the republic.

Smith explains one of the primary complaints about modern capitalism (it's easy for a rich corporation to crowd out small businesses) and a version of one of the most popular modern solutions (tax them to provide for poor people). He doesn't comment strongly on how correct/effective it is, but it's interesting that he gets there a century before Marx and Engels.