(Up to: Why IDon TLike Capitalism Politics Vs The Tao )

Adam Smith kept going on about his idea of the "Invisible Hand" , a vague sentiment without any real justification, but that nevertheless I understand to an extent. It can, perhaps, be best thought of as the "matter" that gets added to a collection of individuals in order to make the whole greater than simply the sum of its parts. "Cohesive energy", perhaps, that takes its power from the fact that there is more than one person.

However, Adam Smith was shortsighted, or one-handed, for nothing on Earth naturally has only one hand. The Taoists realised this and entertained the idea through the yin-yang symbol. Newton realised it when he claimed that for every action, there is a reaction. And so, I believe, while the Unseen Hand of capitalism may guide people toward some "greater social good", there is lurking in the background a second hand that represents what is lost under a capitalist system.

To cite the beneficial side alone as an argument for any system is, by its nature, biased and thus useless from a comparative or rationalist viewpoint. In order to decide how much a system will merit society, the pros and the cons must be weighed up equally. As such, Adam Smith has managed to sell only half the equation in some kind of self-referential marketing success.

The sooner we move away from the idea of there being only one unseen hand, the better.

Also summed up in this quote from Simon Blackburn, in "Ruling Passions" (apparently):

"The advice to limit our concerns might go along with the happy belief in an 'invisible hand' or mechanism by which a number of independent agents, each acting on their own narrow concerns, in fact maximize the social good...This mechanism is the great buttress to free markets and laissez-faire capitalism. Unfortunately...there are situations in which instead of an invisible hand there is an invisible boot, ensuring that the same agents do worse than they would under a more generous regime of concern for each other."