Adam Smith Is Innocent

F. Meekins writes about “Nation's Capital Implements Measures Violating Rights & Property” in Red State HERE.

I found yet another ludicrous example of the effect of decades of brainwashing that creates the self-deluding consequences of repeating a mantra made up by otherwise deserving top-class economists, some of them Nobel Prize winners, and daily – hourly! – mimicking in the media by epigones (and not just a few hacks), who assume that if something is said often enough, it must be true, but sadly for them it isn’t.

I refer to the invention of a myth, albeit a myth with the authority of Adam Smith’s name on it, namely that there is a mysterious, almost Divine-sourced force, called by modern economics a ‘concept’, a ‘theory’, a ‘paradigm’ even, known (short gap for sound of trumpets) as ‘the invisible hand’.

Here is the offending sentence:

“According to social planning, the new urbanism, sustainable development, or whatever other flurdelore you want to dress it up with, it is no longer satisfactory to allow concentrated areas of population to develop, expand, or contract in compliance with forces attributed to Adam Smith’s invisible hand.”

‘Attributed’ by whom? Certainly not by Adam Smith! See Lost Legacy archives for detailed rebuttals.