![]() He also pointed out that the business of the market was achieved by a rough “higgling and bargaining” and continued despite the “folly and impertinence” of government policy. Smith was, in fact, in Moral Sentiments, a keen analyst of human irrationality. One prevalent but bogus critique is that the validity of the Hand depends on the (naïve) belief that economic actors are rational and markets are perfect. Here is the Invisible Hand in all its productive but taken-for-granted glory. “Without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands,” wrote Smith, “the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated.” Producing the rest of the workman’s attire, and his tools, home, furniture and utensils, similarly required vast interconnected industries. To accommodate the labourer’s simple needs, Smith observed, required an amount of cooperation that “exceeds all computation.” Smith took as his prime example the labourer’s plain woollen coat, which, “as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen.” Smith enumerated all the parts of the wool industry, all the merchants and carriers, all the elaborate machinery-from ships and mills to looms and furnaces-that would have been involved. Smith’s most important indirect reference lies in his example of how the market provides for even the most humble labourer.
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