The grand thing about markets is not, in fact, that people can profit from doing the right thing well. Rather, it’s the firm thwack in the face people get from doing the wrong thing badly.

In some circles profit is almost a dirty word. It conjures up fat capitalists sucking up the livelihood of poorer people in order to stuff their pockets and make themselves fabulously wealthy.

Natural scientists search for patterns and correlations in the data that they compile from systematic experimentation and observation of events. Having measured the data and identified these relationships, they can then make predictions that help human beings understand and control the world they live in.

Why has the civil service grown so big — but not more productive?The problems are not new, and governments have been vowing to streamline Whitehall for decades. But according to one expert, the central problem is ‘there is no one in charge’

It’s been a rough couple of days for the US stock market - MAG7 (a combination of the top 7 tech companies) sold off almost $1.7 trillion in stock over the past week. The NASDAQ’s down too, by almost 13% - this is the result of tariffs, something Adam Smith was warning about all the way back in the 1770s.

Everywhere the shout is for greater equality. Unequal societies, we are told by some, are less happy. More equal societies, we are told, are more stable and contented.

It’s always a little difficult when claiming that the famed result of a Nobel-winning economist was wrong.

The modern idea seems to be that risk is a bad thing to be avoided, whereas the reverse is true.  Some people do indeed feel comfortable in a safe and stable environment, but this is not where progress and advances are made. 

Largely on the grounds that economists know little to nothing about theology. Certainly nothing professionally relevant.

In which Professor Smith explains that it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest; why we are all better off as a result; and how many people today still don’t get that obvious point!

Joe Stiglitz has done some outstanding economic work in his time. But possibly a greater gift to humanity is the creation of the Stiglitz Test.

In which Professor Smith explains to King George III the folly of his colonial policy and how real source of a nation's wealth lies not in gold but in the productive capacity of its people.