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We walk through Book Five of The Wealth of Nations to map a state that defends, adjudicates, and builds wisely, then pays for it without killing growth. From militias to standing armies, fee-based courts to salaried judges, turnpikes to basic schooling, and taxes to debt, we test what holds up now.

• defense as a professional, civilian-controlled standing army
• justice as predictable law and salaried judges
• public works funded by user fees where feasible
• education to offset division of labor’s civic costs
• incentives in universities and churches
• four tax maxims and ability to pay
• why land taxes beat mobile capital taxes
• state property and monopolies as bad revenue
• debt, consols, and fiscal illusion
• Smith with Hume and public choice echoes

We do have one more episode, which is a summing up and taking stock of why the Wealth of Nations still matters today. It will post Tuesday, February 24th, 2026.

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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Smith closes Book IV by dismantling mercantilism through the lens of colonial policy, monopoly, and rent seeking, then weighs physiocracy against the system of natural liberty. We trace why colonies grew despite Europe, not because of it, and how “wealth as money” broke policy and fueled war.

• mercantilism’s definition of wealth and the balance of trade myth
• monopoly and bounties as tools for concentrated gains
• chapter 7 on colonies as a case study in institutional design
• free ports versus exclusive companies and growth outcomes
• enumeration, navigation acts, and distorted incentives
• defense costs and the arithmetic of empire
• the “nation of shopkeepers” argument and public choice
• draconian wool laws, smuggling, and consumer losses
• physiocracy’s insights and errors, sector favoritism
• the system of natural liberty as Smith’s alternative

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz

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We trace how Alex Schuessler, the once and once-again President of SmartEquip--also a scholar of expressive choice!--built a platform that makes machines more profitable by erasing the friction between parts, service, and uptime. The rental economy, Japan’s utilization model, and IoT diagnostics reveal why transaction costs, not price tags, decide who should own and who should rent.

• rental vs sharing and why property rights matter
• how serial-number specific data kills errors and downtime
• why parts discounts matter less than service speed
• Japan’s high saturation rental market and long lifecycles
• sensors, IoT, and AI for damage attribution and prevention
• decommoditizing parts through integrated workflows
• Coasean boundaries of the firm and renting incentives
• why RB Global acquired SmartEquip to span the lifecycle
• the back-office puzzle of bespoke systems vs SaaS

“Next week: Book 4, chapters 7–9 from The Wealth of Nations”

• (Parts is Parts, from Wendy's) https://youtu.be/OTzLVIc-O5E?si=Mjz8JX-Sl_sdG6bC
• SmartEquip web site: https://www.smartequip.com/schedule-demo/
• Announcement of Schuessler being (re)hired as President: https://news.ararental.org/schuessler-appointed-president-of-smartequip
• Why Japanese "used" equipment commands a premium: https://everycar-review.com/2025/08/27/voices-from-global-dealers-why-japanese-used-machinery-is-their-first-choice/

You can follow Mike Munger on Twitter at @mungowitz