The book was highly regarded and widely circulated, and Smith became famous. In 1778 he was offered a position as Minister of Customs in Scotland and was able to live in Edinburgh with his mother.

He died in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790. In the posthumous inventory of his estates, it was discovered that he apparently secretly contributed a considerable portion of his income for charitable purposes.

Adam Smith's will was executed by two of his Scottish academic friends, physicist and chemist Joseph Blake and geologist James Hutton.

Adam Smith left behind many unpublished works, some of which he deemed unsuitable for publication in his will, and the rest were later published, including A History of Astronomy and Philosophical Essays, published in 1795.

Adam Smith's portrait is printed on the back of the twenty pound sterling issue dated March 13, 2007.

Shortly after Adam Smith's death, almost all of his manuscripts were destroyed. In the last year of his life, he seems to have planned to write two major papers, one on the theory and history of law, and the other on art and science. The Philosophical Essays, published after his death, may contain portions of the latter treatise.

The Wealth of Nations is Smith's most influential work, and it was instrumental in the creation of the field of economics as an independent discipline.

In the Western world, this book can even be said to be the most influential book ever published by the Institute of Economics. The Wealth of Nations became the classic refutation of mercantilism, the theory that large reserves of precious metals were indispensable for economic success, after the publication of the book in 1776. There have been many calls for free trade in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

These voices also believed that the economic hardship and poverty of the time was caused by the American Revolutionary War. However, not everyone was convinced of the merits of free trade: the British government and parliament continued to maintain mercantilism for many years.

The Wealth of Nations also rejects the importance of the physiocrats on land, and instead argues that labor is the most important thing, and that the division of labor will greatly increase the efficiency of production.

The success of The Wealth of Nations led to the discarding of many of the theories of the earlier schools, and later economists such as Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo focused on integrating Smith's theories into what is now known as classical economics (from which modern economics derives).

Malthus extended Smith's theory further to overpopulation, while Ricardo proposed the iron law of wages—the belief that overpopulation would make wages impossible to achieve even the level of subsistence living.

Adam Smith's assumption that wage growth would be accompanied by an increase in production is more accurate today.

One of the main points of The Wealth of Nations is the free market, which is seemingly chaotic and uninhibited. In fact, it is guided by what is called the "invisible hand." It will guide the market to produce the right number and variety of products.

For example, if there is a shortage of a product, the price of the product will rise, and the profit from producing the product will motivate others to join in the production. The shortage was eliminated after the worst of all.

If many products enter the market. Competition among producers will increase. An increase in supply will reduce the price of a product to close to the cost of production.

Even if the profit of the product is close to zero, the profit incentive of the production of products and services will not disappear, because all the costs of the product include the producer's salary.

If the price is reduced to zero and then continues to fall. Producers will leave the market, and if the price is higher than zero profit, producers will enter the market.

Adam Smith believed that human beings are motivated by selfishness and greed, and that competition in the free market would be able to use this human nature to lower prices for the benefit of society as a whole, while providing more products and services would still have a lucrative incentive.

However, Adam Smith was also wary of businessmen and opposed the formation of monopolies.

Adam Smith was also a strong critic of outdated government regulations, which he believed would hinder the expansion of industry. In fact, Adam Smith opposed the actions of most governments to regulate the economy, including tariffs, which he believed would eventually lead to long-term inefficiencies and high prices.

This theory, known today as "laissez-faire", stands for "let him do, let him go, let him go", and it later influenced government legislation, especially in the 19th century. In The Wealth of Nations, it is the most well-known and most frequently cited by posterity:

We cannot get a free dinner by appealing to the butcher, the brewer, or the bread chef for brotherhood, but we must appeal to their own interests.

The way we fill our bellies is not to appeal to their philanthropy, but to their selfishness. We will not appeal to them about our situation, but on the contrary, we will appeal to their profit.

Thus every individual will do his best to use his capital to support and manage the domestic industries, and the production of these industries will be of maximum value, and every individual will certainly strive to maximize the annual income of society.

Indeed, he usually did not intend to promote the public interest, nor did he know the extent to which he himself promoted that interest.

Willing to support domestic industry rather than foreign industry, he only thinks about his own safety, he manages it in such a way as to maximize the value of its production, and he only thinks about his own interests.

In these common cases, guided by an invisible hand, he also promoted his goals that he had no intention of accomplishing.

Just because it's not meant is not meant to be harmful to society. By pursuing his own interests, he often promotes the interests of society more effectively than he originally expected.

I have never heard of how many good things have been achieved by those who interfere in trade under the pretense of promoting the public good.

Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was recognized by later economists as the beginning of "classical economics". And Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has become a must-read book for every economist.

There has been a great debate about whether there is a contradiction between Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, which emphasizes "compassion," and "The Wealth of Nations," which emphasizes "self-interest."

Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this the "Adam Smith problem." In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith seems to emphasize the synchronicity of human intentions and actions motivated by charity, while in The Wealth of Nations this is split into the "invisible hand", arguing that in a capitalist system, individuals act in their own interests to advance the interests of the community.

This dissolves the contradiction of self-interest, and he repeatedly points out the contradictions that can arise from narrow definitions of self-interest and human motives. This does not mean, however, that Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments denies the importance of self-interest, when he writes:

Therefore, the functional framework for the self-defense and reproduction of species seems to be the stated goal given by nature to all animals.

Human beings have a natural desire for these goals, but they also abhor the opposite: they love life, fear death, look forward to the continuation and eternity of species, and fear the total extinction of their species.

Although we have such a strong desire for these goals, it is not left to our slow and unreliable reason to decide, but on the contrary, nature directs us to use our primitive and swift nature to determine the means of achieving them.

Hunger, thirst, the lust of the opposite sex, the pleasure of love, and the fear of pain all prompt us to use these means to achieve their own ends, and these actions will lead to our unforeseen results—the good goals set by the great natural world. (To be continued......)