The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith · 1776

5.0 · 6 ratings

About the book

The book that invented economics: pins, butchers, bakers and the invisible hand, plus five hundred pages of Smith noticing how the world actually pays for itself. Longer than its legend and better — the observations still land after two and a half centuries.

Try the short course

Part 1 · Eighteen steps to make a pin. The first six slides, free.

Eighteen steps to make a pin

0 XP

1 / 6

Adam Smith's inquiry into why some nations are rich begins with something you could lose between the floorboards: a pin.

His opening claim is bold. The greatest improvement in what human work can produce, he says, and most of the skill and judgment with which work is done anywhere, came from one thing: the division of labour.

Why a pin? Because in a small trade the whole process fits under one roof, where a visitor can watch every step at once. In the great trades that clothe and feed a country, the work is split up even further, but it is scattered across farms, mills and ports, so nobody ever sees it whole. The pin is simply the version of the story you can actually watch.

Inside the course

20 parts

The pin factory: division of labour in eighteen operationsFree above
«It is not from the benevolence of the butcher…»
Why the size of the market sets the limit of every trade
Money: why silver, and what it measures
Real price and nominal price: labour as the true measure
Natural price, market price, and the pull between them
Wages, profit and rent: who gets what, and why
Stock and capital: the difference that makes one of them grow
Of the accumulation of capital: productive and unproductive labour
Interest, and the many ways to employ a capital
Why some nations grew rich slowly
Towns, trade, and how commerce improved the countryside
The mercantile system, demolished politely
The invisible hand, in its single appearance
Drawbacks, bounties and treaties: the machinery of protection
Colonies, and what they actually cost
The agricultural system, and the economists Smith half-admired
The sovereign's three duties
Taxes: four maxims every treasury still quotes
Public debts — and reading Smith before the economists got hold of him

Questions

Is The Wealth of Nations free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

What is the short course?

20 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. The Wealth of Nations is waiting in the app’s library.