Alan Greenspan may trace the idea that markets fix themselves back to Adam Smith, but what would Smith himself say?
Return to the documentary, Capitalism for the look at the moral philosophy of the creator of “The Invisible Hand” and the book that economics forgot.
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Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which is 17 years prior to writing An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments he ALSO wrote of an “invisible hand” that is remarkably different from the one we all learned in basic economic classes. It reads: “They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.” That is a manifesto for sustainability.