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When J.W. Smith retired more than a decade ago after serving the Northern Pacific Railroad for 40 years, rest and relaxation were the furthest things from his mind. For Smith, retirement meant being able to devote more time to sharing his ideas with the world.

From farmer to railroader to author and economist, Smith, 74, has spent a lifetime using his observations and experiences to analyze the world’s wasteful ways.

Smith made a living as a brakeman and conductor for the Northern Pacific, but his thoughts ran much deeper than where his train’s next stop was. Raised on farms in Montana, Smith
developed an eye for the “distribution of unnecessary labor,” as he puts it. The railroad industry wasn’t an exception. For example, union contracts — written well before Smith began working for the railroad — stated that operating 100 miles constituted a day’s work.

“[The rules] were set for those little engines, small box cars and slow-moving freight,” says Smith. “Then they got great, big powerful engines and modern track, yet had those same rules. Those rules are what made the inefficient labor.”

Efficiency gains. The rules of railroading have caught up with today’s technology (“Now you have two guys operating a train where you used to have five,” says Smith), but other industries still lag behind on the efficiency curve. The biggest offenders: the insurance, legal and medical fields, Smith believes.

“Each one of those [fields] expand profits and people work as much as they can because work is also income,” he says. “It leads to all this waste.”

About 20 years ago, Smith discussed his waste-related notions with a bookstore owner, who told Smith he should write a book about his observations. A good idea, Smith figured.

“On Aug. 1, 1983, I sat down to write the book, and I set a goal of eight months so it wouldn’t ruin the next summer,” he said. “I’m still writing it.”

Or, at least, a variation of it. It took Smith six years to complete his first book, The World’s Wasted Wealth (1989), and he has published four books since that he says expand upon concepts from the previous publications, which detail how providing full rights for all can increase productivity, abolish the “subtle monopolization of land, technology and money,” and eliminate poverty.

Smith didn’t tell his fellow railroaders he was writing a book until it was nearly finished (“It sounds kind of silly to be doing something like that,” he says), but he did tell a few strangers — one of whom later presented an unexpected opportunity.

“I pulled into a siding near Sandpoint, Idaho, one day, and saw three hobos,” he says. “I told them I was writing a book telling how nobody has to be a hobo [by eliminating poverty] and gave them a slip of paper with the name of the book.”

Shortly after Smith’s book was published, one of the “hobos” called him and said he wasn’t a hobo, but a recent college graduate riding the rails. He also told Smith he was a professor’s assistant at Cincinnati’s Union University and Institute, and was chaperoning students on a trip through the Northwest. He wanted Smith to conduct a workshop based on his observations of “wasted wealth.”

A professor sat in on the workshop and was so impressed he encouraged Smith to enroll in the university’s Ph.D. program for political economics.

“Six weeks later, I got a packet in the mail,” says Smith. “I had never even heard of the program. I called all over the country to see if it was legitimate.”

So, Smith began working toward his Ph.D., which he received soon after retiring from the Northern Pacific in 1993. The next year, Smith published a new version of his first book, The World’s Wasted Wealth II. He since has published three more iterations, each one delving further into economic waste.

“It’s just kept expanding and expanding,” says Smith. “If I hadn’t been writing, a lot of my thoughts would have just fallen by the wayside because your mind can’t retain it all.”

Doing his research.Some of Smith’s ideas have come to him while researching the work of other economists, such as Thorstein Veblen, Ralph Borsodi and Stuart Chase. The difference between those economists’ work and Smith’s is that Smith not only lays out the current economic situation, he provides solutions to overcoming the world’s inefficiencies, Smith says.

“Full rights and equality reclaimed for all ... within democratic cooperative capitalism would convert the economy to supercharged capitalism,” Smith writes. “Competition would increase, and a quality lifestyle could be maintained by each while working only two to three days per week.”

To Smith, working only a couple of days a week isn’t an option if he’s to share his idea of a productive society with others. In 1993, Smith founded the Institute for Economic Democracy, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing solutions to overcome inefficiency, poverty and inequality.

“Virtually anything that breaks through current beliefs to hard reality is tough to get out there,” says Smith.

But, by further developing his thoughts and books, he’s going to keep trying.