![]() ![]() ![]() I know this is a dirty word in some circles, but it is an honorable part and parcel of the invisible hand. McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and all the other participants in this industry are continually trying to figure out better ways to satisfy customers, whether it is by shortening queues and thus wait times, or introducing newer and better products, or providing scrupulously clean restrooms (hey, they are only human, and we don’t pay all that much lighten up, they do a pretty good job here too). The reason we have pretty good fast food, given the prices we must pay for it, is due to competition. Thomas Sowell said it best when he averred: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions that by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no penalty for being wrong.” He, too, is channeling the invisible hand. It explains, as if an explanation were necessary, the inefficiency of the post office and the motor vehicle bureau. The claim that “competition tends to bring about a better product” is also profound, and, also, part and parcel of the invisible hand. If that does not at least slightly shake up the atheists of the world, then nothing will. If that is not a miracle, then nothing is (Adam Smith thought that the invisible hand was God’s hand). In contrast, when the human race bans protectionism and regulation, the invisible hand will take over without any central direction at all. These other accomplishments have a coach, a coxswain, or a conductor. But this pales into total insignificance compared to the teamwork made at least potentially possible by the invisible hand all eight billion of us cooperating producing goods and services and thus fighting poverty. Thus, this article offers an account of the variance in readings of the invisible hand and contributes toward the contemporary revisionist Smithian literature that explores, criticizes, and revises dominant readings of Smith.We all marvel at the teamwork of the championship basketball team, the winner of the eight-person shell in the regatta, a 100-member orchestra playing 64 th notes without a hair’s breath of discord. The exploration of these readings and the manner in which they are epistemologically conditioned are embedded within the wider discussion around an interpretation put forward by Quentin Skinner. These distinct readings from two North American economists with remarkably similar historical, geographical, and academic contexts provide the ideal case for exploring the manner in which readers' differing epistemological commitments shape their different readings of historical concepts and texts. To do so, the author examines two divergent readings of Adam Smith: Jacob Viner's reading of Smith's invisible hand as God and Paul Samuelson's reading of the same three words as an allocative mechanism that translates an individual's “selfish” actions into the public good or “the best good of all” within a state of perfect competition. This article argues that to adequately evaluate such readings one must understand the inalienable role that a scholar's epistemological framework plays in the conditioning of their reading of historical texts and concepts. As historians of economic thought, we are faced with the task of evaluating the readings put forward by these scholars. ![]() Within the discipline of economics, as within all academic disciplines, scholars produce texts in which they examine, discuss, and sometimes invoke their intellectual predecessors. ![]()
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