The Wealth of Nations after 250 Years

On 9 March 2026, 250 years had passed since Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was first published. On this occasion, the Adam Smith Institute in London held a meeting which was attended by RNH Academic Director Hannes H. Gissurarson, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Iceland. There, he greeted the two founders and former leaders of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr. Eamonn Butler and Dr. Madsen Pirie, who have both visited Iceland to give lectures. Subsequently, Hannes wrote an article about the Wealth of Nations for the online magazine The Conservative where he pointed out that many of the ideas found in the book had been around for a long time, but that it was Adam Smith who organised them into a coherent and powerful system, on which the whole discipline of economics was built. The two most important ideas in the Wealth of Nations were still not understood by many: that one man’s profit need not be another man’s loss, and that order could arise without commands. When people tried to promote their interests, they could end up promoting the public interest, because they had to offer better goods or services than their competitors. Adam Smith’s theories had been resoundingly confirmed by experience. There was a strong correlation between economic freedom and high living standards.