When the U.S. Congress decided to buy G.M. and then buy used cars that get low gas mileage- that was the invisible hand of corporatism picking the pocket of the future. Government efforts to prop up fossil fuel car production by stimulating new manufacture simply wastes natural resources and all on borrowed money. Corruption is piled atop corruption yet the invisible hand that tarps over the public reception of bank debt in Bush-Obama policy is thought to regulate in some way 'market' competition to produce better products...at this pace in two or three hundred years American cars may be fully electric yet the debt might be a half a google dollars. The global corporate market is a convenient corporatist entity that inhibits free enterprise that would rival the global corporate network.
The invisible hand theory of Adam Smith's 18th century Capital theory has transmogrified into an excuse for Spenserian rule by global corporations. It is an anarchic adaptation in support of big corporations and socialist union with corporatism. It is a negation of reason in preference for political tyranny by the wealthiest in a version of global oligarchy. Mr. Smith only intended for the Sovereign of England not to dictate trade relationships for the common man. In fact the invisible hand could be a gloved reference to the democrats of the period whom had opposed royal domination of commerce.
Corporatism has transcended the capitalist purpose of best allocation of resources and methods of production through coincidence of competition. The inanimate evolutionary progression of capital enterprise is a political economic philosophy of mythic scale that has been largely eclipsed by the development of global corporatism through unintelligent design; most of the trans-national business world increasingly is subject to inertia and evolution of a concentrating wealth network of power unintelligent in blind disregard for the externalities of individual interests and the ecological health of the planet Earth. J. R. Saul's wrote and excellent primer on corporatism (0released in paperback in 1999 named 'The Unconscious Civilization'
http://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Civilization-John- Ralston-Saul/
The invisible hand is not the one that added 800 billion dollars (more or less) to the national debt to bail out banks with 'toxic debt' covering it with a 'tarp' administered by Mr. Kaskari- neither is it the glass one with a hoverfan and remote control directed fingers that flies at dark in to banks in winter to snatch money from teller drawers- no the hand that is invisible referred to in the theory of Adam Smith is the one that was supposed to twit royalty that would not willingly yield trade rights to private corporations.The invisible hand was a veiled reference to the power of the people of England to have another revolution to off the heads of power if it was needed- and the royals took the hint.
Today corporatism has taken over power from the people in the United States and given it to globalist concentrating their wealth and international advantages while Americans are being twitted in to worshiping as a fetish the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith's ideas about capitalism. Capitalism must be made to respond to parameters set by a democratic government that will best serve the real interests of the people of the nation- there is nothing intelligent in the invisible hand that will think better about governing than a representative government ruled by the people. The invisible hand in a narrow definition with some accuracy would be a reference to economic competition to achieve a particular goal- like the X prizes. Plainly the individual companies and designers given a valuable goal can best discover for themselves how to meet the specified criteria...that is the meaning of the invisible hand of Adam Smith rather than a crackpot support for brainless anarchic economic activity without government regulation.
Occasionally there is confusion about the criterion of the invisible hand of capitalism- some believe it is an avocation of business supremacy and divine right equivalent to that of kings of former ages. The Wealth of Nation's as the 'bible' of capitalism advocated free trade and separation of regulatory powers unto the appropriate venues regarding trade. The author Adam Smith's work occurred in a liberalizing era before which royal prerogative had complete control of the authority to establishing trading companies. The English revolution of 1688-89 with John Locke as the leading author of political philosophy against the divine right of monarchs did not end the progress toward democratization that continued with the later writing of Smith. The concept of an invisible hand regulating trade is an implicit expression for freedom from royal trade by decree and special dispensation.
Plainly Smith's criterion of independent operations of national and international trade activities was an improvement in the performance function theory of trade. When Peter the Great attempted reform in Russia several decades before many of his mercantile concepts when ordered in to becoming actualized never were, simply because as the power from a centralized or monarchical power increases a dissipation of reciprocal knowledge of the specifics of trade opportunities decrease. The invisible hand of participant regulation of trade allows the better, particular knowledge of trade opportunities and the evaluation of trade goods to be actualized directly by the parties of the individual trades.
Trading and capitalist accumulation by private citizens when freely allowed to exist is in theory the most effect way to let the greatest number of trading activities to exist. Adam Smith developed his paradigm of concatenated civil trading operations producing the best possible values and results with the unstated yet implicit premise that the government would set general parameters of goals for free enterprise trading activities to occur. The Monarchy was far from powerless in the 18th century, and could still determine international and national trade and business policy, tariffs and taxation-Smith did not imagine an existential, global business environment of such power that the political self interest of England at the royal, citizen or national levels would be negligible or of no effect.
Corporatism is a political philosophy invented by Benito Mussolini with government and corporations so dominating society that it is virtually authoritarian. Unfortunately Adam Smith's theory of capitalism published about 1776 is exploited occasionally as a defense for globalist corporatism against the national interests of a democracy such as the United States. Capitalism without a governing regulatory power regarding general and national parameters that are set to achieve national objectives can become an oppressive piratical organization of self-interest, undemocratic collectives inimical to national, democratic interests. In the United States today such a trend has developed following the end of the cold war in 1990.
The right role for the invisible hand of free enterprise capitalism is a functional, organizational principle for trade and production of goods within given criteria that would preclude monopoly or other forms of repression of free enterprise. In the ideal free enterprise environment within a national democracy a government may set ecological economic guidelines and allow citizens to invent and innovate ways to accomplish business and trade that would achieve those general parameters. A government may determine that global corporations have developed an unfair advantage in concentrating wealth and power over energy and transportation related matters that are harmful to national interests and develop alternative criteria for the citizens of the nation to follow that would neutralize and reduce those unfair advantages of global corporations through a variety of means of populist free enterprise supports.
The government of the United States could develop a strategy for increasing home energy production through wind, solar and fuel cell generated electricity with the intention of replacing the individual reliance upon corporate produced electricity, corporate refined and sold fossil fuels and etc. If the citizens can reduce their annual energy costs for transportation to less than 25 cents they should be more able to save capital for their own uses in materials quality increase. Government may offer a variety of incentives, reinforcing and aversive measure to accentuate their policy directives without usurping the ability of the individual traders and producers to regulate themselves in how they go about trading and with whom they make value added exchanges.