It is a difficult task to narrow down a favorite passage from a body of work as rich as that of Adam Smith. One of the things that has always amused me about Smith is his use of Scottish examples to make universal points. In one of these he launches himself into the long-running rivalry between Scotland’s two major cities: Edinburgh and Glasgow. Smith lived for a time in both cities and worked on what would become the Wealth of Nations in what were then, as now, two very different cities. In The Wealth of Nations he makes use of this to develop a classic example of Smithian social theory.