Who Has Seen The Invisible Hand?
Orthodox economic dogma asserts that when people are left to themselves, without government intervention, an ‘invisible hand’ of rational self-interest will guide them to invest in ways that are best for society, based on the highest expected returns of competing investments. A completely free economy, of course, is nonsense and no society has ever succeeded with such a policy. Even during the so-called laissez faire period of American history – the nineteenth century – major economic activity was triggered by massive government intervention in railroad finance and land distribution across the great prairies.
