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Summary Of Daedalus And Icarus The Wealth Of Nations

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“Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them”. In the story of Daedalus and Icarus, Daedalus cautions his son against the dangers of flying too high and too low, as reaching either side of these two extremes will be detrimental to the wings and thus to Icarus’ life. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith uses a literary device to describe his proposition about the effects of paper money by inserting an analogous metaphor of the Daedalian wings to his argument, creating a succinct yet powerful and illustrative explanation of his reasoning; by including the metaphor into his argument, he shifts it from paper money being very beneficial to the commerce and industry of a country, to a warning about it resting on a fragile balance in between insecurity and corruption, either of which are negative characteristics of paper money as a …show more content…

Smith begins his argument in the previous sentences, stating that paper money and banking “enable the country…to increase very considerably the annual produce of its land and labour” (305). The medium of paper money allows exchange to speed up and production increase and the commerce and industry of a country are improved. This gives the topic of paper money a positive connotation. However, he juxtaposes this with his next statement, saying that paper money makes commerce and industry “somewhat augmented” and “cannot be altogether so secure” (305). His meaning by this is paper money only creates a market that is larger in size, and it introduces the negative qualities that exchange has always been prone to: insecurity and corruption. He also chooses the diction “suspended” to refer to the Daedalian wings of paper money. The denotation of the word refers to paper money as something hanging between a top and bottom. It is a

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