Does reading this book make you realize almost every economist

"Realize" implies uncovering a hidden truth. So no.

>>9167905
Are you implying that Adam Smith is ironically retarded or not retarded at all? There are a couple more possibilities but these two are the most basic.

>>9167899
No but it's worth reading. George and Smith have a very similar view towards absentee landlords and rentiers but George ends up becoming too libertarian about other non land based rents and the means to combat exploitation.

>>9167899
Also George was not an economist he was a journalist and Smith was a moral philosopher not an economist. Economics really only developed as a response to Marx (who was also not an economist).

>>9168141
Yeah. The prices manifest themselves into two things under Ricardo/Mill, profit and wages. They manifest themselves into infinity things under Menger, but they include wages, profit, and rent. They manifest themselves into wages and output under Keynesianism.

So other than Menger, George was the only other person who kept the threefold categorization of prices in his concept of what the prices of a good consist of. Very interesting that rent is something either misunderstood by some economists or not understood correctly because it is to be matched by a continually increasing productivity of capital, and so kept in check.

He takes a hardline Smithian stance, and as a result ends up forming two groups of his own, because of the correlation, of what makes up the price of a good: wages/profit and rent. instead of three distinct areas, two correlated ones and one uncorrelated.

>>9168144
Haha, you're right George wasn't like many other economists. But we wasn't NOT an economist, his stance is actually somewhat similar to Manger's except for key differences in regards to correlations of specific elements.

Note: this book is unbelievably thorough. Very well explicated. He DID misinterpret one of my favorite theories of Mill: productive capital, and he also misinterpreted how Smith defined capital in his discrete sense as well. It's a good thing that despite these slight misinterpretations, his overall social philosophy is unbelievably rigorous and his framework valid.

>>9168144
>Economics really only developed as a response to Marx
No and socialism didn't start with Marx either.

Yes.

>>9168167
>He DID misinterpret one of my favorite theories of Mill: productive capital, and he also misinterpreted how Smith defined capital in his discrete sense as well.

Can you further explain? These too misinterpretations, and the correct ones?

>>9169478
So if you read the second chapter of the first book, you'll note he kind of non-academically brushes off the note on Mill's conception of what defines 'productivity' in capital. Now he says this is really undefinable, but in the third chapter of book III, he then states that really all capital is, is anything of value within the circle of exchange. This is an interesting approach towards Capital, and like Menger's as well, because it seems to include anything that has an exchange value as being defined as wealth. He shares his idea of the multifaceted Smithian elements of prices, land, labor, and capital, with Menger as well.

Now, this is not a problem, but he seems to think that investment in capital shouldn't, or somehow doesn't, include things that enhance productivity, like transportation costs. These costs necessarily work their way into the good, for remuneration for the services rendered. Not to mention all of the different materials. If you really think about it, Menger's stance towards the price of a good is really the best one, regardless of how you believe the different economic goods making up this price's price themselves to be determined: the final price of the good reflects in a small, decreasing proportion the farther away it is from the final good, a percentage of the overall profits of the manufacturer of those goods, because the person who buys the productive machinery has to reimburse the fixed costs implicit. Now, Mill's issue was, like Smith's, that anything that could aid in producing efficiency in individuals would increase productivity. Mill took it to an unbelievably logical extreme though: he said that technically, although you would never be able to witness the infinitesimal increase, the book bindings of the books that students read to increase their productive efficiency as workers are reflected in the prices of the goods they end up selling, because without the book bindings they couldn't have read the books. The book bindings are just a small part of the overall costs of school, because they increase the costs of applicable literature, but if they weren't in the price of a book, the prices of the output the student's make after graduating would be less than before, technically. He says this is unobservable, but in my minds eye, his definition of capital is just as unobservable, the amount of goods he keeps to manufacture other goods might be intermingled with the amount of goods he keeps to exchange with other goods. The former technically not being classed under capital and just wealth, and the latter being capital and wealth under his system.
.

>>9170043
(2/2)

Also, Smith had the view towards clothing, education, food, et al. That these were capital. As production increased, they would be furnished with a larger amount of capital which their bodies were the 'companies' or 'corporations' for. They would be more productive with it, or not productive at all without it. In any case, it is a simple terminological classification where he differs because these things are still wealth under Geoism, just not capital. A minor terminological difference that makes it seem like increasing food, clothing, or education don't increase productivity