Adam Smith Freed At Last

[Lucky]

Why is Adam Smith so often quoted but so rarely read? Is he the prsioner of his 900-page text "The Wealth of Nations?" My favorite Newsweek columnist Allan Sloan reviews the new book "On The Wealth of Nations" by conservative humorist/pundit P.J. O'Rourke in today's New York Times Book Review.

For all of you wondering what it is that Adam Smith has been trying to tell us, here is a glorified Cliff's Notes version, apparently quite readable!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/books/review/Sloan.t.html

[AdamSmith]

Thank God Almighty!...

But really I am -- all right, my namesake is! -- not quite as impossible to read as all that.

The secret is NOT to try and eat the whole thing at once.

[TampaYankee]

Free or not, I just wish Adam would get a different pickle storage container!! He and his pickles may be the death of me yet.

[AdamSmith]

I'll be good -- promise!

http://www.thehammer.ca/content/2004/0921/klein_pickle.jpg

http://www.thehammer.ca/content/view.php?n...21-klein-pickle

[AdamSmith]

This is in reference to the recent discussions about established escorts advising newbies to set their rates in the stratosphere.

The Adam Smith-ness of all this is too delicious. Either the market will pay a premium for new horseflesh or it will not. If it does not, then either the sellers will adjust or their business will wither. Individual clients' advice will very likely make a difference if it comes in sufficient quantity. But if it comes from just one client, then it may or may not make a difference, and if it does, the difference may well not last long.

I am prone to the pathology of wanting to become involved in some real way with escorts I see. But I at least have the wits not to seek to influence their business practices, other than reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement about a specific engagement.

[Lucky]

Adam Smith never met Scott Adler, thus his philosophy does not account for an incessantly aggravating factor that by sheer endurance would wear down normal market practices.

[AdamSmith]

Scott is a force of nature, to be sure. But (regardless of who these discussions were about) distorting market dynamics is not quite the same as overturning them.

If clients are fool enough to pay exorbitant rates, good for the seller. That is his market value. But if demand languishes and the seller doesn't have the wits to adjust, too bad. I love being reamed out but I also like the palaver before and after. Anything that drives truly dense purveyors off the field is okay by me.

[Guest StuCotts]

You're right that the free market allows us to avoid exaggerated charges by withholding patronage. But it doesn't end there. Brief story:

I once hired an escort with an enviable reputation, whose positive reviews over time have massively outweighed his negative ones. His fee reflects all that. ( I didn't review him myself because of all the chatter about him out there already. ) My hopes for the encounter were sky-high.

Clothed, he was handsome, classy, well-dressed, attentive, multilingual, obviously well-traveled and a wonderful kisser. Unclothed, he added a mouthwatering body to the picture. In bed he was an athlete, until he lost his erection beyond retrieval. I was crestfallen.

I did what I'd never done before: I negotiated his fee down. He wasn't happy, but couldn't make much of an argument for having given me, even with all his a priori qualities, value commensurate with his full fee.

If you keep your wits about you, Adam Smith's principles can work for you in all sorts of ways. Most of them will work better if you firmly avoid paying in advance.

[AdamSmith]

>If you keep your wits about you, Adam Smith's principles can

>work for you in all sorts of ways. Most of them will work

>better if you firmly avoid paying in advance.

Stu, good object lesson.

For my part, I freely admit that once I've agreed on terms with a hire, a lot of Adam Smith-ness then goes out the window. This was touched on in a previous thread that started as a discussion of tipping:

http://www.maleescortreview.com/dcscript/d...ing_type=search

Down in that thread, Oz posted and I replied:

>I believe in the old saying from Chicago, "if you do

>something for mama, mama do something for you." It does

>come back 10 fold. IMHO

Heartening to hear that and agree.

For the same reason, I pay first-time engagements up front rather than at the end. I like to show goodwill and shift the risk from their side of the transaction to mine. After all, I often know more about them than they know about me, going into it. (Some decline it until afterward -- self-protection against a sting? -- but at least they know it's there.)

My naivete and faith have not brought me to grief thus far. Even if they did, I suspect it would not change my habits, beyond educating me about that particular person.

[Guest StuCotts]

Tut, tut. False modesty. If there is anything naïve about you it doesn't show in your posts. What does show is the notable difference between your attitude toward escorts and mine. But they're both valid and we're both good guys. Agreed?

[AdamSmith]

>notable difference between your attitude toward escorts and

>mine. But they're both valid and we're both good guys.

>Agreed?

No question. Further I can see that if I were privileged to be diving into the unknown as boldly and frequently as your reviews attest, I would probably come around to your attitude right smart.