LOONY TUNES no. 182

1 

Sandra L. Kisselback, Berne Historical Society, posts (20 October) on The Altamont Enterprise Opinion HERE 

‘Or you could sense an invisible hand grazing your shoulder ever so mischievously.’

2

Steven Pearlstein, Business Editor and Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at the Schar School of George Mason University, posts (21 October) in The Washington Post HERE

“Will technological progress stymie the economies of advanced nations?”

“Avent is right about one thing: The economic and social institutions that once maintained social and political harmony by ensuring that wealth was fairly distributed are no longer working. Just as with the Industrial Revolution, he writes, it will take a “period of wrenching political change” before new institutions will emerge. It is not enough, he warns, to simply leave it to the “invisible hand” to work out the new arrangements, for as we’ve learned in recent years, the invisible hand turns out to be nothing more than “the thudding fist of the powerful.”

3

Mosharraf Zaidl posts (25 October) The News (International)

HERE

The Lockdown and the Invisible Hand Mafia

The invisible hand, of course, is Adam Smith’s original formulation of the unintended positive collective outcomes, based on intentional private actions. My use of the term here is referring to anything but positive collective outcomes. In short, I am employing irony. I make that clear here because it is easy to misinterpret. And Pakistan’s invisible hand mafia’s principal expertise is to work for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. In this way, it is the reciprocal equivalent of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Hence, invisible hand mafia.

COMMENT

Congratulations to Mosharraf  Zaidl for getting Adam Smith's meaning correct when he used the metaphor of "an visible hand".