----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- David Mitch asked about the "relevance issue": If Smithian economics is to be put under immediate scrutiny for the crime of its author being "a white male who died over two hundred years ago", then little can be gained in having lower divisional students attempt to study the Wealth of Nations, or almost any other classical work, for that matter. Furthermore, I doubt that most modern day academics can grasp the classical paradigm to any such degree necessary for conveying the nature of classical economic concepts to 1st or second year college students. There are certain intellectual barriers to entry, if you will, to the classic works, including Marx, which really condemns college courses purporting to teach these schisms to ending up as nothing more than quasi-religious events. Ask yourself, for example, how many professors of any stripe understand the classical concept of capital sufficiently to teach a scientifically grounded course on classical economic thought? Chas Anderson ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]