If you open almost any conventional textbook on the history of economic thought, the story begins in the eighteenth century. It starts in Scotland, where Adam Smith observed a pin factory and synthesised the foundational ideas of modern capitalism. We are taught that before 1776, the world understood wealth merely as a hoard of gold, and that economics …
Algorithm · Jul 1, 2026
The Fourteenth-Century Economist Who Predicted the Modern World
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Long before Adam Smith analysed the wealth of nations, a North African scholar was charting the laws of markets, labour, and the rise and fall of empires.
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