invisible hand

plural invisible hands

1. economicsA metaphor for the principle that in a free market, an individual pursuing his own self-interest also tends to promote the good of his community as a whole.

   In short, Smith understood that the invisible hand is often benign, but not always.

   2008 May 25, Robert H. Frank, “The Invisible Hand Is Shaking”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 Aug 2008

   5 more examples

   By preferring the ſupport of domeſtick to that of foreign induſtry he intends only his own ſecurity; and by directing that induſtry in ſuch a manner as its produce may be of the greateſt value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other caſes, led by an inviſible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

   1776 March 9, Adam Smith, “Of Restraints upon the Importation of Such Goods from Foreign Countries as can be Produced at Home”, in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. […], volume II, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, book IV (Of Systems of Political Oeconomy), page 35

   When Lucasians postulate that prices are ‘flexible’ they seem to mean that we can observe only Walrasian market-clearing prices. There is no nonsense here about the invisible hand doing any noticeable and comprehensible work: its task is accomplished by definition.

   1982, Frank Hahn, Monetary and Inflation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, page 48

   Aha, they say, but extreme wealth is good for all of us. All will be uplifted by their god’s invisible hand. […]

   2014 July 29, George Monbiot, “The rich want us to believe their wealth is good for us all”, in The Guardian

   Yet the carbon giants continue to reap $600 billion in annual subsidies from public coffers, not to speak of a greater subsidy: the right, in Klein’s words, to treat the atmosphere as a “waste dump.” ¶ So much for the invisible hand. As the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson observed, when it comes to the environment, the invisible hand never picks up the check.

   2014 November 6, Rob Nixon, “Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’”, in New York Times

   However, the mainstream pro-capitalist position, especially as flat-out climate-change denialism becomes less common in the ruling class, is that the invisible hand and mighty forces of ‘entrepreneurialism’ will definitely lead to the ‘fixing’ of the problem.

   2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC