A Mysterious Mission

Poster on Debates Org   HERE.

Profit-driven society: Does the "invisible hand" solve everything?

“es, the invisible hand allows good products to succeed. Yes, the invisible hand solves the problem of allocating resources, because it allows good products that people want to succeed and it also allows things that people do not want to fail. Resources are not distributed efficiently if someone else decides what people should want, instead of what they actually want. There will be a shortage of some things and an overproduction of others. The invisible hand allows everyone to participate in the economy by allowing them to vote with where they spend their dollars.”

Comment

“es” writes as if there is some sort of entity in markets that allows some things to happen and disallows others. 

Apparently, “someone else” cannot decide what people should want but the “invisible hand” entity can! Remarkable.  How does the “market” choose between “someone” and the “entity”? 

Surely, people see visible prices and decide accordingly whether to buy?  What does the “entity” contribute to the decision?

We know that if people did not exist there would be no markets because there would be no prices.  Now suppose there was no “invisible hand” entity, we can be sure that where “visible” prices in markets exist, there would be markets.  The ”entity” is redundant; there is no “invisible hand”. 

“es” asks the wrong question.  It should be “does the "invisible hand" solve anything”?