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Misrepresenting Adam Smith

  • Adam Smith Institute 23 Great Smith Street London SW1P 3DJ United Kingdom (map)

If you can’t make it in person, you can join the Zoom livestream of this event (beginning at 6:30pm) by clicking here

It is common to see short quotes from Smith used to claim that he supported policies such as progressive taxation, public schooling, or antitrust policy, was more nearly a modern progressive than a modern conservative. In fact, he was neither. In each case, reading the full passage the quote is from makes it clear that the claim is false.

About the speaker:

David Friedman is an academic economist with a doctorate in physics retired from twenty-three years teaching in a law school. His first book, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, was published in 1973 and is now in its third edition. It includes a description of how a society with property rights and without government might function. There as elsewhere, he offers a consequentialist defense of libertarianism.

His most recent non-fiction book is Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, covering systems from Periclean Athens through modern Amish and Romany. He is also the author of three novels, one commercially published and two self-published, and, with his wife, a self-published medieval and renaissance cookbook and a larger self-published book related to their hobby of historical recreation.

Much of his published work, including journal articles, essays, drafts of forthcoming work and the full text of several books, can be read on his web page: www.daviddfriedman.com.

Full details:

Date: Tuesday, 4th May 2022

Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Agenda:

18.00 - Doors open + welcome drinks

18.30 - Lecture starts 

19.15 - Q&A 

20.00 - Event closes

For more information or to secure your place, please contact events@adamsmith.org



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Sailing Free: What Law in Medieval Iceland Can Teach Us Today

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24 May

Ayn Rand’s Philosophy for Freedom and Flourishing