On the Wealth of Nations, on the D.C. Subway

Katherine Mangu-Ward | June 5, 2009

From the indispensable D.C. summer intern tracking blog, Spotted:

"Two red-badge toting interns sharing a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations ... Cliffs Notes version. I won't bother elaborating further.

This tidbit, and every other entry on the site, is meant to reinforce the city's full-time inmates' (totally justified) hatred of interns, especially badge-wearing Capitol Hill jerklets.

But this doesn't strike me as so bad. It means that there are still folks who arrive in D.C all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed who are quickly shamed or in some way publicly humiliated for not knowing what's between the covers of The Wealth of Nations.

The story seems a bit off, though, since there actually doesn't seem to be an official Cliffs Notes version of Wealth of Nations (just a chapter in The Worldly Philosophers). Maybe they were reading P.J. O'Rourke's version? If so, this little tidbit actually raises my opinion of D.C. interns. 

Comments

Mad Max|6.5.09 @ 6:29PM|#

'It means that there are still folks who arrive in D.C all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed who are quickly shamed or in some way publicly humiliated for not knowing what's between the covers of The Wealth of Nations.'

But I bet the interns still manage to get to know about a lot of other experiences between covers.

|6.5.09 @ 7:09PM|#

Someone's got a dirty mind.

Triumph The Insult Comic Inter|6.5.09 @ 7:09PM|#

the indispensable D.C. summer intern tracking blog, Spotted

Spotted...in my poop!

BakedPenguin|6.5.09 @ 8:01PM|#

...the city's full-time inmates' (totally justified) hatred of interns...

Don't try comparing that with the rest of the country's - full time inmates' (totally justified) hatred of everyone in Washington DC. Nothing personal, Kate.

straight male|6.5.09 @ 8:21PM|#

As a DC-area resident whose job occasionally requires visiting Hill offices, I respectfully disagree with the OP's disdain for interns.

|6.5.09 @ 8:22PM|#

It just means Spotted makes up shit. Don'tcha know you can't believe anything on the intertubes?

|6.5.09 @ 8:24PM|#

For ceremonial purposes, all Reason interns should have to answer to the name "Shavin McRawballs."

|6.5.09 @ 8:48PM|#

What's wrong with "Heywood Jablowmie" or "Dick Hertz", NutraSweet? What, are you too good for that?

MNG|6.5.09 @ 8:59PM|#

"shamed or in some way publicly humiliated for not knowing what's between the covers of The Wealth of Nations."

Oh for Pete's sake, I'd bet my car that most people that read, and write for that matter, for H&R have not read all of the Wealth of Nations from cover to cover. I certainly have not.

|6.5.09 @ 11:19PM|#

These people live in a city full of politicians, lobbyists and lawyers, and it's the interns they're bitching about?

WTF is wrong with them?

-jcr

|6.5.09 @ 11:20PM|#

I'd bet my car that most people that read, and write for that matter, for H&R have not read all of the Wealth of Nations from cover to cover.

I did, but it's been a couple of years.

-jcr

|6.6.09 @ 10:28AM|#

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Chad|6.6.09 @ 7:35PM|#

Actually, I think VERY VERY few conservatives know what lies beneath the covers of Wealth of Nations either. It isn't "This old book that I never read but proves my point, or at least so I heard".

Kelso\'s Nuts|6.7.09 @ 5:40AM|#

Well, one thing I enjoy about living in South America is that we don't have D.C. interns or earnest Starbucks Baristas nattering on out of their arses about how wonderful Barack Obama is. We do have presidents and ministers of finance, trade, commerce, industry, tourism, and central bankers who do know all of the thinking from Adam Smith to Paul Krugman with stops-over at Marx and Milton Friedman.

We also have people who will know what the rate of interest on their own and other nearby sovereign currencies are.

This applies left, right and center. We just had an election in Panama in which the Center-right Ricardo Martinelli beat the Center-left Balbina Herrera and both put out detailed, econimically sophisticated 60-page, single-spaced "Planes del Gobierno," which the voters actually read. They had detail and real assumptions. Each made sense and neither were that different. Herrera's advocated a little more social spending. Martinelli's advocated a small tax cut from the already low 15% flat income and 1% flat capital rates under the Center-left Torrijos.

Herrera was so furious with the way Obama was fucking around in the campaign that she established a close friendship with her most hated enemy, George H W Bush, and used it as a campaign highlight. Both of them for being basically libertarian with modern republican views on budgets and social spending as with single-payer health, but free capital markets, split close in all self-identification categories.

I don't know what's up in America but the sense I get from libertarian, conservative and even very left wing (men, gay and straight, especially, up in the states) that their voices are not being heard on issues, and this may be the undoing of the Democratic Party. Obama seems to make all libertarian, conservative, and REAL leftwing men beserk with the screwed up corporatist no policy policy and the "homages" to PC bullshit without and commitment to personal freedom or social justice. Now, that crap didn't play at all down here (Chavez far left, Uribe far right, both think Obama's a clown), but it's very popular up there.

The policies are so ill-conceived and the stories are so boring by now I have to assume someone with a clue will stop Obama, Summers and Geithner before recess-flation hits hard.

|6.7.09 @ 11:10AM|#

Kelso-

George Herbert Walker Bush is not "basically liberatrian." Please see:

Voodoo economics; escalation of drug war; David Souter; Dick Darman; Iraq I-and Panama.

zoltan|6.7.09 @ 5:59PM|#

Obama seems to make all libertarian, conservative, and REAL leftwing men beserk

The libertarian, conservative and REAL leftwing women however, not so much.

tarran|6.8.09 @ 3:06AM|#

Chad is right (though he does not realize it);

The Republicans advocate the mercantilist policies that the Wealth of Nations was written to rebut. If Republicans actually read the thing, they would start behaving like 19th century Democrats - without the support for slavery.

|6.8.09 @ 10:52AM|#

Interns are guilty of being young, nothing more.

Back when I was the same age as the interns, I found them pretty amusing. If anything, they were a far sight nicer and more polite than I was.