Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on May 25, 2021
… is from page 212 of my GMU Econ and Mercatus Center colleague Pete Boettke’s Winter 2014 Independent Review paper, “Fearing Freedom: The Intellectual and Spiritual Challenge to Liberalism,” as this paper is reprinted in The Struggle for a Better World – a new (2021) collection of some of Pete’s writings:
One of the great scientific truths of the “invisible hand” is that the participants do not have to grasp (in fact cannot grasp) the overall operation of the system but are guided only by their own private interests in particular contexts. But it may very well be the case that while we don’t have to understand the spontaneous order of the free-market economy in order to benefit from it, a significant portion of the general public might need to grasp the basic scientific principles and the aesthetic beauty of the “invisible hand” in order for it to be sustained in the face of ordinary political pressures for expediency.
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