What Did Smith Really Mean by the "Invisible Hand?"

Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is often invoked as a free-market wonder cure. Most people have a mistaken view of what Smith meant by the invisible hand, claiming it is a moral imperative to only seek self-interest as "the invisible hand" will convert that pursuit to overall public good. Others think it a pricing mechanism i.e., market self-regulation.

But Smith only wrote of the invisible hand, at least in economic terms, once--and in very specific context. The invisible hand relates to--and only to--the investment of domestic capital. Whereby a businessman, by investing capital domestically, will strengthen not only over all revenue of the country, but the nation's safety and well being. The "invisible hand" part is that this all happens in spite of the businessman's limited self-interest.

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic 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 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. (The Wealth of Nations)

The unintended-benefit-for-all feature of capital investment, however, is limited to domestic investment if the market is not completely free. In an unfree market it cannot work. Our current global economy does not constitute a free market because, although there is free movement of capital and production, there is not a free movement of labor. John Bishop writes:

The overall argument of The Wealth of Nations implies that if an international free market could be established in goods, labour, and capital, then the same-nation restriction [investing in one's own country] would be lifted on capital investment. In today's world, we may be closer to an international free market in goods, and for all practical purposes we have free movement of capital, but labour movement across national boundaries is tightly restricted. Therefore, a free market does not exist internationally, the invisible hand cannot operate internationally to maximize global revenue, and so the same-nation restriction should still apply. (Adam Smith's Invisible Hand Argument)

It is in the best interest of a corporation to move its production to a third world country--because people will work for lower wage in more dangerous conditions--but it is not in my best interest as a worker to move to a third world country along with it. Nor could I always move with it even if I wanted to.

"[Smith] thought that individuals would prefer to invest their capital domestically because of the higher costs and difficulties associated with foreign investment in the eighteenth century" (Mohamed). In other words, the cost and danger of investing in distant markets, in Smith's time, would lead any rational person to invest within their own nation--because that would best serve their interest. The notion that giant, centralized corporations would one day be the rule, as opposed to the exception, of business and that these giants would "invest capital all over the world without national preference would have been inconceivable to Adam Smith" (Meeropol).

Libertarian minded individuals will insist that the solution is to weaken the government, since the source of market restriction that favors corporate interest usually comes from government intervention and regulation. And indeed, according to Smith's theory, in a GLOBALLY free-market, self interest and public interest--again, in the context of capital investment--will line up. (As a note I do agree with the libertarian supported notion of doing away with most corporate welfare.)

But as Smith knew well we live in a world of nations who, more often than not, aim at personal advantage at the expense of other states. Though businessman can be counted on to act in league with self-interest, the same cannot always be said of politicians. Politics are often motivated by identity (tribal, ethnic, etc.) issues; they are as much motivated by passions as they are by reason. (Indeed the weak point of unfettered free-market ideology is the notion that, in order to function, all people will seek what is in their enlightened self-interest. Many businessman cannot be counted on to act in rational self-interest, nor to even know what is in their best interest in the first place.) As such there will always be nations who are willing (or eager) to pander to corporate interest in the name of personal advantage. And it is in the interest of corporations to restrict the freedom of the market, through oppression and exploitation. A fact Smith makes quite clear:

The interests of this third order [those who live by profit], therefore, has not connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two [laborers and landlords]...The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [those who live by profit], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicous attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly that of the publick, who have generally an interest to decieve and even to oppress the publick, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, decieved and oppressed it. (Wealth of Nations) *Brackets are Bishop's

Businesses restrict the market, and thus exploit both consumers and workers, by "having monopolies, restrictive trade practices, price fixing conspiracies, and constraints on labor organization"(Bishop).

Nor is it in the best interest of merchants to have the consumer looking out for their own self-interest. There's a reason marketing campaigns are often targeted toward incentives other than lower price--tempting a consumer to make a choice based off image enhancement or sex appeal or brand loyalty relieves businesses from price competition, thus maximizing profit. It also tempts the consumer away from the most important question of all--Do I really need this product in the first place?

The Invisible Hand of the Free-Market Touched Me in My Private Sector

In a previous post of notes and musings on egoism (which is the un-PC term for individualism) I made the claim that the concept of a free market devoid of reasonable government regulation was a misunderstanding of the economic system Adam Smith proposed and championed. To quote Barry C. Lynn in Harper's:
There is an undeniable beauty to laissez-faire theory, with its promise that by struggling against one another, by grasping and elbowing and shouting and shoving, we create efficiency and satisfaction and progress for all... Until recently, however, most politicians and economists accepted that freedom within the marketplace had to be limited, at least to some degree, by rules designed to ensure general economic and social outcomes. ("Breaking the Chain")

Let me start by saying the current economic crisis is not a failure of the so-called free-market because we don't have a free-market. As I read it the current crisis began due to a combination of fraud, improper CEO payment incentives (i.e. pay based off a certain sales number or contractual obligations that are divorced from overall company health and benefit), and corporate welfare. In other words government intervention is as much a contributing factor to the housing and credit bust as deregulation.

This isn't a Republican or conservative argument--Republican capitalism is often equatable corporate welfare. They talk about being free-market, but party voting record speaks otherwise. Most so-called capitalists aren't free market either. Like the politicians they buy off they talk the talk, but you'll almost always notice that, when push comes to shove, they're more than willing to take a government handout. Preferably with few strings attached.

By corporate welfare I mean laws and regulations that give either give certain companies a de facto monopoly over a particular market and licensing and regulation that loads the dice in favor of pre-existing corporations, thus relieving themselves of competion. Bailouts are the most extreme form of it. An example is the sugar import industry in America. American fruit growers lobbied to have a tariff placed on imported sugar so that they're product would be cheaper and more enticing. That's why our sodas are sweetened with fruit syrup and why foreign produced Coke tastes so much better than their domestic counterpart.*


A historical example is the savings and loans scandals of the 1980s. As summarized by an online liberal FAQ:
In 1982, Savings and Loan lobbyists bribed Congress to quietly deregulate the industry. In effect, Congress promised to cover any losses if S&Ls made bad investments with their customer's savings, but also promised not to regulate or oversee these investments... Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse soon ran rampant in any institution that called itself an S&L. ("Myth: Deregulation Promotes Competition")

The lesson according to the FAQ is that deregulation allowed the fraud and greed, but that's only half true. Notice the part where the government promised to cover any losses. The promise of government intervention was as much to blame as deregulation. (Thank the gods of plutocracy that we learned our lesson about socializing the costs of financial sector fuck ups.)

Corporate welfare can be seen in the buildup to the current crisis through the Federal Reserves' money printing policies which was used to give lending institutions more capital to loan out, which gave banks the incentive to make even riskier loans. Short term profit became the name of the game--consumers, banks, and federal institutions were all players.

But as I've said before I don't think all government regulation and intervention is bad. Lynn writes on the anti-trust case against Wal-Mart:
From Adam Smith onward, almost all the great preachers of laissez-faire were tempered by a strain of deep realism. Most accepted that a national economy ultimately served a nation that had to survive in an often brutal world. So, too, did most accept that all economies are characterized by struggles for power and precedence among men and institutions run by men; in other words, that all economies are fundamentally political in nature. And so most accepted the need to use the power of the state—most dramatically in the form of antitrust law—to prevent any one man or firm from consolidating so much power as to throw off basic balances. The invisible hand of the marketplace, and all that derives from it, had to be protected by the visible hand of government.

So what are acceptable forms of intervention in my opinion? Anti-trust laws for one. Also to require corporate transparency to protect consumers from fraud. That last one is where deregulation did play a role in the current crisis. Banks were giving securities (those toxic assets we're hearing so much about now) much higher safety ratings than they deserved, leading consumers to believe they were taking a lower risk than they actually were. That's fraud.

Consumer protection agencies like the FDA are another. All of the health issues surrounding Chinese product in the last year are a good example of why products need to be inspected because companies, in pursuit of profit, will try to cut corners at the unwitting expense of the consumer rather than in their benefit. They do it by using unsafe but cheaper materials and allowing tainted products (like peanuts if you want to talk about American greed) to enter the market.

Government regulation and tariff powers are also crucial if we plan on being open to foreign markets while staying a viable economic power ourselves. American workers can't compete with countries who don't pay their labor a living wage. Trade with exploitative countries must be restricted so that domestic products can compete fairly. It isn't free-market at all to pit goods from slave labor against our own manufacturers.

As an end note it's important to recognize that the American consumer isn't blame free in all of this. Too many people have equated happiness and prosperity with cheap consumption and buying power. Wal-mart's and Target's (Yes, Target is big box, too) cheap, Chinese goods are easy on the pocketbook in the short-term, but they undermine our future. Our gluttony has left many jobless and deeply in debt.

*I had a debate with my mother about the above sugar example because she felt that American fruit growers' interests weren't something to be written off so easily. Though I see her point I disagree that sugar should be tarriffed so far above fruit syrup that almost no soda producer will use it (I think Jones Soda might use real sugar, but they're more of a niche market). My argument is that the consumer gets an inferior product when the benefit isn't all that great. There are others ways to make money off fruit and most fruit workers are, from my understanding, immigrants anyway, so most of the Americans that are losing out are only the industrial farming interests. Regardless, if you're product is inferior find a new way to make money, don't pass laws to force your crappy product upon me.

But to give an example of corporate welfare that isn't tied up in domestic vs. international interests we don't have to turn far here in Kentucky. Churchill Downs has used its lobbying power in Kentucky to keep casinos out for a long time. They even got themselves exempted from Louisville's smoking ban for a time, giving them an unfair advantage over local bars.

Summer Soldier

(This is a cross-posting from the Warrior Poet Group blog, Warrior's Song)

The following is an excerpt from an exchange of emails I had with Dave and Drew, the gist of which was my disbelief that there appears to be no organized call for a congressional investigation into actions of the financial sector and the possibility of their defrauding the public. Drew mentioned posting what follows below as he felt I had hit on something important.

Am I surprised that there isn't a current move to prosecute/investigate of its own volition? No. Am I surprised that more people in the general public aren't screaming for an investigation? Yes. Now perhaps the reply could be made that the system is broken and that the people can scream all they want and no one is going to do anything because the politicians are in the financial warlocks' pockets. I don't deny that many are indeed in the pockets of bankers, but I resist the idea that WE, in the public sense of the term, have no power. I'm sure corporate interests would prefer that we THINK we have no power because, in a way, just believing that means they've already won. Anyone who doesn't vote and keep themselves politically involved under the pretense that it is a waste of time has peddled off one of the few democratic weapons they possess for complacent nihilism. It isn't a clear-headed appraisal of the deficiencies in our political system, but a failure to struggle when struggle is most obviously needed. Civic disengagement is an agent of social atrophy. I can't always say with certainty whose purposes it will serve, but it will never be your own.

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." -- Tom Paine

Of course things aren't as bad as Paine's day, but they aren't ideal...

It never ends

If you thought accountability and rule of law were coming back to America, think again. Obama ran on a platform of transparency and an end to executive abuses of power. While he has made good on these promises to some degree—shutting down secret prisons, ending CIA torture—the essence of shadow-side government, the mindset that allowed such abuses to occur in the first place, remains.

With the Obama Department of Justice’s (DOJ) assertion that illegal wiretapping suits against the government should be dismissed on the grounds that not doing so would be a threat to national security is the same tune Bush and company sung. I wish it were the case that this was the only argument presented by the Obama camp as that would only be disheartening, What is horrifying is Obama’s unprecedented claim that the government is immune from suit in cases of illegal wiretapping unless the information gathered is “willfully disclosed.” As Keith Olbermann of CNBC points out, this amounts to saying it’s okay to steal as long as you don’t use the money.

Even Bush never went so far as to suggest that the people have no legal recourse when it comes to unconstitutional spying, which is more or less what the DOJ is saying. What’s so frustrating is that, having bought into Obama’s campaign rhetoric, many of us believed these kinds of stunts were over. This issue seemingly proves, however, that while Obama has no intention of abusing executive power—for now—he also has no intention of ceding his office’s option to do so in the future.

It’s a sad fact that we have two basic choices in politics today: big government that leans left and big government that leans right. Either way we’re stuck with an opaque, coercive institution. We as citizens are partly to blame, however, for not demanding otherwise.

If you’re as outraged as I am, write or call your elected officials and demand a reversal on this position. We need to remind those in power that our forefathers saw government as a necessary evil, whose existence was to be justified to the people at all times. Let’s remind our leaders that the Constitution was meant not to embolden, but restrain them.

My elected voice

Below is a letter I sent to US Representative Yarmuth and Senator McConnell.

Like many Kentuckians and Americans, this past year has been a series of events that have evoked shock, horror, and outrage within me.

Not only as one of your constituents, but as a fellow American, I urge you to do everything possible to enact congressional hearings to uncover exactly how the current economic crises occurred, specifically so that proper regulation and policy can be enacted to prevent future economic catastrophes. If in the course of these investigations individuals or businesses are found to be fraudulent, I urge you to push for prosecution.

On a recent episode of The Bill Moyers Journal, the economist and former regulator William K Black made an excellent case for just such an investigation by arguing that, if this were a series plane crashes, the government would carry out an extensive investigation to get to the root of the problem. Why is that not being done here?

I hope the failure by America’s political elite to demand such an investigation is merely a lapse in judgment, but recent headlines make me wonder. The double standard of the Obama administration in relation to the financial sector and the automotive industry is deeply troubling. Why is GM’s CEO forced to resign while the financial warlocks who got us into this mess are being rewarded? Why are we punishing some failures and ignoring others?

The cynic in me believes this is just another example of the apparent truism that, in America at least, if you’re powerful enough the law can’t touch you. Between the aforementioned kid-glove treatment on the banking industry, and the complete lack of resolve to investigate Bush era abuses of power, I can’t see how any other conclusion can be drawn. That the Bush administration tortured and illegally wiretapped is no secret. Reports by the non-partisan Red Cross have made that clear enough. What’s worse, one of our allies—the United Kingdom—is planning to investigate whether their intelligence agencies were accomplices to American sanctioned torture. And yet, even with all this, the principal criminals in this outrage are being protected by the current administration, which is citing the same old “national security” excuses we had to endure for the past eight-years.

As my representative in Congress, I’m begging you to do everything in your power to help us once again become a nation ruled by law. We are beset by issues, both economic and political, domestic and foreign, but we’re never going to solve any of them if there isn’t a deep and rational inquiry into the nature and cause of our current woes. Our legal system has no use if it can’t touch the mighty. A government cannot be of the people if it isn’t accountable to the people, and I’m counting on you, as my elected voice, to do something about it.

If you agree with any of this, feel free to copy and send it to your own representatives. Their addresses can be looked up here.

Dirty Little Confession

A few months back Drew sent me the paperwork to apply for a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the NEA grant in short. I told him I was working on filling it out, which was true at the time, but I never finished it. I deleted the .pdf and washed my hands of the whole things.


So here's the dirty confession: I don't believe in the mission of the NEA (though I appreciate Drew trying to help me out).


Shock. Gasp. Various other Batman sound effects. I am all for individuals pursuing artistic endeavors, make no mistake about that, but I'm just not sure about government-funded art that doesn't have a public purpose, like a mural. And even more importantly I see little justification as to why the general taxpayer should fit the bill for art that, in all probability, they don't even like. I support the artists I like by buying their books or the magazines they appear in. Why should I, or anyone, be forced to pay again at tax time to reward the artists who, to paraphrase Ron Paul, have only proven their ability to fill out government forms?

Think of it this way: At a workshop a writer whose work you can't stand asks you for $10 to help them go to a literary conference. Would you give it to them? I wouldn't, but at least I have the choice in that situation. I have to fund the NEA and the people the chose to give grants, whether I want to or not.


Of course some might say I'm an idiot for passing up on free money (is that you I hear, mother?) but it's an issue of integrity. I wouldn't sacrifice my artistic integrity, and I won't sacrifice my beliefs for a government handout. If you've got the resolve to hold an opinion you should have the balls to see it through with action.