Kudos to the Adam Smith Institute of London, which has succeeded in remarkably short order in commissioning, funding, and erecting a statue of Adam Smith “on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile – right in the heart of Scotland’s capital city, where Adam Smith worked and died.” Appropriately enough, the statue stands on the site of an ancient marketplace.

Adam Smith’s importance as a founder of modern liberal society can hardly be overestimated. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1952,

The ideas that found their classical expression in the two books of Adam Smith demolished the traditional philosophy of mercantilism and opened the way for capitalist mass production for the needs of the masses. Under capitalism the common man is the much-talked-about customer who “is always right.” His buying makes efficient entrepreneurs rich, and his abstention from buying forces inefficient entrepreneurs to go out of business.

Smith’s wisdom might be especially useful in this election season when Republicans and Democrats compete to spend more taxpayer dollars:

“[Governments are] … without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.”

“Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct…. Those unproductive hands … may consume so great a share of their whole revenue … that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment.”

For a lively and readable introduction to Adam Smith, read P. J. O’Rourke’s On the Wealth of Nations or watch him discuss the book here.