About the invisible hands

 Have you ever been fascinated by the people who were driven to build your local library from private donations? Have you ever wondered if more public works could be handled by citizens rather than awaiting a bureaucrat to tax someone so that the government can eventually make an infrastructure investment of around 70 cents on every dollar that was collected? If this piques your curiosity you are in the right place! I made this blog to bring visibility to all the hard working people that don't let taxation dull their ambition to give back to their community.

I am a student of economic thought, a finance professional and a veteran of the U. S. military. I have traveled and observed human interactions from war torn Iraq to peaceful island paradise in Hawai'i and I have had one nagging question bother me at every observation. What came first, economic order or the central planner? I hope you have picked up on this humorous question, it is obvious that economic order evolves without a central planner needed to guide it, but you would never guess that from the one-sided conversation that is capitalized by our media and governments.  I feel the reason for this lies between the different paradigms of society, collectivist thought vs. individual liberty.

This blog will explore how individuals can work to take back their liberties by negating the collectivist call for greater intervention due to a lack of social safety nets, education funding and charitable giving. Do not get this confused with socialist calls to action, this will be an exercise in personal liberty through personal responsibility. After all, most of the basis for government intervention is based upon the message that no one is looking out for a group in society or an identified tragedy of the commons. Their is a lot of history to comb over that shows that even public goods can be provided through public-private coordination rather than public coercion alone.

I think F. A. Hayek said it very well when he wrote, "What is called economic power, while it can be an instrument of coercion, is, in the hands of private individuals, never exclusive or complete power, never power over the whole life of a person. But centralized as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely distinguishable from slavery." We see some of this "power over the whole life of a person" being shopped around by some politicians recently. This could take the form of coerced vaccinations, oppressive taxes, or restrictions on a food deemed unhealthy. You can almost apply one quick guide to test for the flex of this power, was it presented as "for the common good" and then the actual decision was not left in your hands to make?

I doubt anyone would be so rash to say they do not care about the welfare of their family, friends and community! However, the right to make a decision that is best for our individual situation, based on many facts that central planners cannot take into account, should be sacrosanct. No central bureaucrat could hope to ever know each individual situation holistically to make a best decision for each individual. Those that argue against individualism claim that it is chaos, that we do not know the outcome of all these millions of individual decisions. I encourage you to research emergent order and watch this short film by Russ Roberts, It's a Wonderful Loaf (https://wonderfulloaf.org/).

Finally, I hope you join me in discussing these principles with those around you. The importance of protecting our individual liberty for future generations is on the line! You don't have to be preachy, no need to shout people down that disagree with your point of view. It is very effective to simply help others see these principles in action. Point out the grocer who donates food to a homeless shelter, give praise to the employer that gives a chance to someone thought to be unemployable. We see heroic acts of The Invisible Hands every day, lets make them VISIBLE!

Jason W. Matthews

The Invisible Hands

What is The Invisible Hands? - Adam Smith coined this phrase in his book, The Wealth of Nations. Many people have very strong opinions on what he was talking about but I feel it was more of an observation of how people behave based on his philosophy he captured in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, "Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely." This idea plants the seed to what motivates the following, "He intends only his own security, and he is in this, as in many cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." The end Smith was talking about was the overall improvement for everyone in society. I have heavily borrowed Adam Smith's philosophy and have added a twist, it is not only one hand but many individual, not collective hands controlled by a central autocrat, that make up a society's beneficial works.

What is the scope of The Invisible Hands, are we just talking about charity that is already being done? - I hope not. Charity is an easy starting point and has a very important part to play. However my lightbulb moment when it came to the manifestation of the invisible hand was actually watching an episode of This Old House where they talked about some of the other things built by a merchant that built this fantastic old house in New England. The merchant built a town hall and a water works all with his own money, no need for the community to tax everyone. So to answer this question my goal is that The Invisible Hands can help inform and curate a new generation of public works done through public-private partnerships!

Why The Invisible Hands now? - I love individual liberty, what many call freedom but which I feel is too vague. Individual liberty means that we individuals have the authority to make decisions on the majority of our life. Where to live, work, what hobbies, where to worship, what to eat and what security to actively undertake. These liberties are under attack, and to speak to those that feel it is just a couple small liberties we must give up for "equality" or "safety," I will direct you back to the quote from Hayek on the home page. We truly must exercise our promise in the preamble to the constitution of "Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" or we will collectively subject ourselves to someone else deciding what liberties we can have.