A system of thought allowed for the free market price of land to cyclically go down to zero. This is the economics of Moses. The economics of Jesus is a restatement of the economics of Moses. The first was applied during Biblical times and the latter, united with Aristotle’s thought and...

Some scholars have argued that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not have a common set of views on economics, or that the Constitution, except perhaps in isolated clauses, does not reflect any specific economic views. The principal Framers did, in fact, share a basic set of economic...

Adam Smith’s version of Virtue Ethics can be traced directly back to Plato (Socrates) and Aristotle. Smith basically skipped Aquinas and Augustine because they were also Catholic theologians, as well as philosophers. Referencing them would not have been looked upon kindly by the Scottish...

Eight centuries ago, Thomas Aquinas clearly differentiated between probability and uncertainty in decision making. He viewed probability eclectically as having elements that involved propositions about events, frequency of events, and single events. He found an important role in his approach for...

Keynes carefully and methodically devoted chapter nine of the General Theory to a detailed discussion of Virtue Ethics which is related to Adam Smith’s discussion in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Both Virtues and Vices were considered by Keynes. The four main virtues in the Greek version of...

The economics profession has completely mixed up Adam Smith’s definition of self-interest, by which Smith means the absolute necessity of successfully applying the Virtue of Prudence, with Jeremy Bentham’s directly conflicting definition of self-interest, which is the Vice of Greed,...

Frank P Ramsey did not consider the possibility of representing the concept of probability by an interval valued approach in his lifetime. Ramsey considered probability to be either ordinal or numerical. There was absolutely no room for interval estimates and interval probability in his...

Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian tracts The Principles of Morals and Legislation and In Defense of Usury contains an explicit attack on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations on pages 8-23 in chapter Two of The Principles of Morals and Legislation, as well as on...

Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) provided a general analysis of virtue ethics (prudence, temperance, courage, justice, benevolence, where Smith combined the virtues of temperance and courage into the virtue of self command) that was applied to all areas of a human society...

Augustine’s argument about the failure of wealth to insure one’s happiness is very similar to Adam Smith’s position except that Augustine compares a lower income or middle income class citizen with a rich citizen while Smith compares a lower income class citizen,or poor citizen, with a...