Does the ‘Invisible Hand’ belong to God?

As a Christian, I’ve often wondered how to think (biblically) about the “invisible hand,” a term coined by Adam Smith. Today, my thoughts were jump started by a blog post by pastor Doug Wilson. Fair warning, I’m just going to jot down a few thoughts on this for now!

Let me set the stage by sharing a short clip from Tom Woods:

In economics, the invisible hand of the market is a metaphor conceived by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace.^[1] The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith’s writings, but has come to capture his important claim that individuals’ efforts to maximize their own gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. (Wikipedia)

On one hand, you have liberals (and liberal Christians) telling us that we need to advocate that the central government regulate and enforce fairness and equality in the marketplace lest we descend into a state of…well, Somalia.

On the other hand, the cool devotees to Ayn Rand…

I’m glad to see Doug Wilson talking about this concept. Here’s just a sample. (If this interests you, go read the whole thing.)

Someone once said that real capitalism is easy to defend, but hard to praise. I understand where that sentiment comes from, but I want to lean against it, hard. Adam Smith’s invisible hand (whether he knew it or not) was and is the right hand of the Lord Jesus, and marvelous are all His works.

If we preach the gospel in power and truth, the result will be a free people. And when we have a free people, we will have free markets. Only a free people will be able to trust the hand of God in their financial affairs and market choices, which is what the free market is — people trusting God. That is the only way we can have free markets for any length of time.

What we have now, crony capitalism, or what I call crapitalism, is how sinners try to cheat the system. But you don’t blame football when someone cheats at football. You don’t blame math when people get their sums wrong. You don’t blame gravity when you trip and fall on your nose. Or at least you shouldn’t.

I’d like to ask Tom Woods for his take on this–if he is a believing Catholic/Christian. I’m guessing he is–as you can hear him speaking of the seemingly mundane existence of a ham sandwich as “a miracle.”

In the video you miss the bit where he imagines the absurdity of a central government who’s task is to regulate and control the creation of a ham sandwich. Full video.

We could use more Christian voices on this topic. What do you think?