Economics
1772 to 1823, London
Comparative advantage and the logic of trade.
Start learning David →Ricardo’s beautiful and counter-intuitive proof that two countries both gain from trade even when one is better at producing everything.
Ricardo’s explanation of why landlords grow rich without lifting a finger - and why the price of corn determines rent, not the other way around.
Ricardo made the central question of economics not how wealth is produced but how it is divided - among landlords, capitalists, and workers locked in conflict.
Ricardo’s attempt to ground the value of goods in the labour required to produce them - a theory he never fully solved, and that Marx would inherit.
Ricardo’s startling change of mind - admitting that machines, the engines of progress, can throw workers out of jobs and hurt the labouring class.
epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.