Instead, he lauds the figure of themarket as a knowing entity, envisioning it as a kind of processor of socialinformation that, through the mechanism of price, continuously calcu-lates and communicates current economic conditions to individuals inthe market.

The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the inducement a merchant has to keep his capital, thereby increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power, both of which are in the public interest and neither of which he intended.[1]

Speaking of such lessons, Wilson and John Gowdy write, “the invisible hand metaphor can be justified … for humans in addition to nonhuman species, [only] when certain conditions are met.”

Both involve “invisible hand” magic — intricate, unplanned, “self-organizing” systems.

If the hand behind the invisible hand is also invisible, we have invisible hands operating, as it were, at different levels. The signalling device at the individual dimension (let’s call this Level 1) will be the price system. If the hand behind the invisible hand is also invisible, then the HUMS explanation amounts to the claim that the system is spontaneously generating the kind of institutions (Level 2) necessary for the invisible hand to operate at Level 1. We would then have spontaneous or unintended order at Level 1 and Level 2.

We have thus an example in which the hand behind the invisible hand is visible, in line, therefore, with Mittermaier’s presentation of the pragmatic view in which humans deliberately decide upon an institutional framework within which an invisible hand is supposed to operate. If, however, we were to argue that the appropriate institutional arrangements would have emerged of their own accord, in other words without such planning, Mittermaier would classify us among the ranks of the dogmatic free marketeers. For a dogmatic free marketeer, the hand behind the invisible hand is also invisible.

An invisible hand process is at work if individual human action results in some sort of order that was not specifically designed by those individuals pursuing their own ends. But in order for the invisible hand to operate well, institutions need to be in place for otherwise the human action at play could result in chaos (no order at all).

and institutional structures (street layout, fire prevention measures, moral codes etc) ensure that some sort of order prevails. The hand behind the invisible hand is visible.

The economist Paul Romer, who attended the 2019 event, was quoted in the New York Times as saying:I picture an economist showing up at Burning Man and saying: ‘Oh, look! This is the miracle of the invisible hand. All of this stuff happens by self-interest, and it just magically appears.’ And there’s this huge amount of planning that actually is what’s required beneath it to make the order emerge.

We have a means of identifying what an invisible hand is all about without necessarily using the terms invisible or visible. And should we find it more convenient to do so, we can associate an invisible hand argument with either a spontaneous (Hayek) or an unintended (Otteson) order.

Hayek is thus informing us that the framework of our analysis should include institutions that are ‘The results of Human Action but not of Human Design’.

Hayek notes that if we confine our arguments to the natural and artificial realms confusion is bound to ensure: ‘... one would describe a social institution as “natural” because it had never been deliberately designed, while another would describe the same institution as “artificial” because it resulted from human action’ (Hayek 1967, 130)

Suppose we identify an order in human affairs. On further investigation we ascertain that although the regularity came about as a result of human action, it did not arise from human deliberation.