WHAT NORBERT SAID... :-)

Since I began reading Philip Mirowski's Machine Dreams, I have become more convinced of my intuition that the Invisible Hand is a myth. Near the beginning of the book, Mirowksi quotes Norbert Weiner on the Free Market Fairy, AKA, neo-classical economics:

The more he [Weiner] learned about neoclassical economics, the less he liked it. The following passage from his Cybernetics was characteristic of his attitude:

[O]ne of the most surprising facts about the body politic is its extreme lack of efficient homeostatic processes. There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers . . . will result in the end in a stable dynamic of prices, and with [sic] redound to the greatest common good . . . unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simple-minded theory. The market is a game. . . . The individual players are compelled by their own cupidity to form coalitions; but these coalitions do not generally establish themselves in any single determinate way, and usually terminate in a welter of betrayal, turncoatism, and deception, which is only too true a picture of the higher business life. (1961, pp. 158-59)