 Hi there. My name is Don Boudreau. I'm a professor of economics at George Mason University and a senior fellow at George Mason's Mercatus Center. And I'm here today to talk about Adam Smith and his views on trade and the economy. So let's get started. It's a really good question. What is the role of ideas? I used to believe 30 or so years ago when I was younger and even more stupid than I am now. I used to believe that ideas aren't that important. What really matters are the hard facts of institutions, interest group alignments, the statutes written on books. I still think these things matter, but I have done an almost 180 on my view of ideas. Ultimately, I think ideas are at the bottom of everything. We are an idea species. One of the things that distinguishes us is our incredible ability to use the airwaves in order to transfer highly nuanced and detailed ideas from one brain to another. It's one thing that distinguishes us. We don't just send out warning signals. I'm doing that right now. Transferring fairly sophisticated ideas that are in my head through the airwaves to listeners. And so it would be absurd, I think, to conclude that, well, really ideas ultimately don't matter. Of course they matter. You can have the best constitution, the best set of statutes, and if the presumptions that people have, people on the ground, I'm not talking just about leaders, I'm talking about ordinary people. If the presumptions that people have, if the notions that people have about what is right and wrong, what's acceptable or unacceptable, what are the appropriate modes of behavior and what modes of behavior are inappropriate, then you'll get one kind of society compared to if people have different sets of ideas. As many listeners know, I've been very much influenced by the work of the great economic historian, Deirdre McCoskey, and my coming around to understand the importance of ideas started before I really had gotten into McCoskey's work, but her work has driven her home for me. And her explanation of why humanity in the past 200 or so years has, for the first time in history, experienced this what she calls great enrichment, this incredible explosion of wealth, why we today have electricity and can talk and communicate in this manner as opposed to how the vast majority of our ancestors lived, is that ideas changed. In particular, the idea that commerce and trade are not just tolerable activities, but noble activities, activities that bring dignity to people who engage in them. So to the extent that we celebrate and talk favorably about market entrepreneurs, that makes entrepreneurship a more acceptable pursuit. And so as it becomes a more acceptable pursuit, more people become entrepreneurs as we accept that there's no shame in having your business go bankrupt because consumers have changed their tastes and preferences. We become more willing to accept the creative destruction that is inseparable from economic growth. You can't have this industry grow unless this industry over here shrinks because this industry over here needs resources and it's got to get the resources from somewhere. The workers and other materials from somewhere. And so in my view, it has largely been a change of ideas that has changed the course of history to the extent that history will continue to change and history will change because of changes in ideas. And that's why working to promote ideas that you believe are sound is so important. The idea of business is an important business to be in. That sounds self-serving perhaps. I mean, I'm in the idea of business. I've always been in the idea of business. I'll always be in the idea of business. And so I like to think that the idea of business is selling something worthwhile that I'm not peddling snake oil. But I genuinely believe it to be so. The Wealth of Nations is a book filled with great ideas. I think it is highly improbable that all of the economic growth that we've enjoyed since the publication of this book has nothing to do with the ideas in that book. I'm not saying that people often mistake and say, oh, Adam Smith is the inventor of capitalism. That's just nonsense. Adam Smith was describing the world that he saw around. He didn't invent capitalism. He didn't invent self-interest. He didn't invent entrepreneurship. He didn't invent the market. But he did in explaining for the first time in a creative and engaging way how the market works, in explaining that the operation of the market is not a bad thing, but it's a good thing. He helped to change ideas in a way that made acceptance of the market more widespread. And for that, we should thank him. And so my short answer to Tate's question is, yes, ideas matter. Without good ideas, you have a not-good society. With good ideas, you will ultimately get a good society. So it's important to promote good ideas and to debunk bad ones.