An idea · Early Modern · first attested 1776
The Invisible Hand
Private intentions add up to a public order no one intended.
Smith's most famous and most misread metaphor. The baker bakes not out of love for the city but for his own gain – and yet the city is fed. In pursuing private advantage within a market bounded by law and custom, people unintentionally produce an order none of them designed or held in mind. It is an argument about unintended consequences: a complex order can arise from below, with no author. Greed is beside the point. Later economists made an idol of the phrase; Smith himself used it sparingly, and only three times.