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Essay on Adam Smith and Government in the 18th Century
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is such an esteemed memorial in the literature of economics that it seems unlikely it can throw any light on as recent a development as containerization. Nonetheless, in his first three chapters Smith explores in considerable detail the connections between specialized manufacture, the cost of transportation and the extent of markets, and he does so in a way that can be directly applied to the story of containerization.
This relevance is doubly surprising because not only is The Wealth of Nations over two centuries old, it was written before manufacturing was extensively mechanized, before the steam engine had been adapted to provide power for factories and locomotion, and at a time when horse-drawn wagons, canal boats and wind-driven ships provided the only means available for moving heavy freight over long distances. Of course Smith was unaware of the mechanical technologies that would transform manufacturing and transportation in the 19th century, but his deeply informed study of Great Britain's economy in the 18th century gave him an unrivaled understanding of the forces that governed the commercial world of his own time. And it is Smith's concern with costs and markets that links the analysis he presents in his classic study of 18th century commerce and the impact of containerization in the 20th century.
The 18th-century economist Adam Smith envisioned free enterprise as the respond to all of man's problems. He viewed capitalism as an affluent, contemporary and free-trade commercial society that would facilitate the flourishing of men. To Smith, capitalism is the appropriate foundation to build on an ideal society, a society that answers men's need for self-preservation, procreation, order, happiness and perfection of the species. Adam Smith had a visualization of capitalism that was much more elevated than that of most neoclassical economists......
