YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT

On one level, Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees is the direct precursor of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, on a more thorough level, it is also a justification for Pres. Obama's "you didn't build that" statement.

In volume II of the work, Mandeville not only justifies extensive government regulation:

If you will give yourself this Trouble, you will find the Number of Clauses and Proviso’s, to govern a large flourishing City well, to be prodigious beyond Imagination; and yet every one of them tending to the same [386]Purpose, the curbing, restraining and disappointing the inordinate Passions, and hurtful Frailties of Man. You will find moreover, which is still more to be admired, the greater part of the Articles, in this vast Multitude of Regulations, when well understood, to be the Result of consummate Wisdom.

He also reduces the role of the individual to its proper size:

Among the things I hint at, there are very few, that are the Work of one Man, or of one Generation; the greatest part of them are the Product, the joynt Labour of several Ages. Remember, what in our third Conversation I told you, concerning the Arts of Ship-building and Politeness.1 The Wisdom I speak of, is not the Offspring of a fine Understanding, or intense Thinking, but of sound and deliberate Judgment, acquired from a long Experience in Business, and a Multiplicity of Observations. By this sort of Wisdom, and Length of Time, it may be brought about, that there shall be no greater Difficulty in governing a large City, than (pardon the Lowness of the Simile) there is in weaving of Stockings.