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Prominent Scientific, Macro-Economy Personalities and Politicians as Supporters and Critics of the Invisible Hand Idea

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-06256-8_3

2367-3370

Tadeusz Szuba,

Economic Theory and Policy

The aim of this chapter is to present the most significant and influential supporters and opponents of the Invisible Hand idea. Among them there are presented not only economists, but also philosophers, politicians (like Margaret Thatcher) who were governing their countries in such a way that Invisible Hand mechanisms received a favourable environment to provide self-control Self-control and self-optimisation Self-optimization of a local or national economy and social structures. The case of Poland will also be discussed because in 1989 professor Leszek Balcerowicz,Balcerowicz, L. inspired by Margaret Thatcher’s Thatcher, M. reforms, created in Poland a favourable environment for a very large scale Invisible Hand action. What was extraordinary at that time was the fact that the Invisible Hand task was not a simple economy optimisation but a provision of the emergence of a new spontaneous order,Spontaneous order of some fabric/web, of a new nationwide economy, for the country of ca. $$\approx $$ 38 million people as fast and efficiently as possible. No central planning system is able to calculate something like that—the Invisible Hand did that in just 2 years. Despite the suffering of ordinary people, the quality of the task was so good that it is taken now as an example. The aim of this chapter is not to copy and paste some biodata, but to extract and present the then environment of supporters and opponents, which presumably allowed them to make observations, to see important, global socio-economic events and then, on this basis, to draw conclusions which they later presented scientifically/politically or practically implemented.