The Invisible Foot

Abstract

The phrase “the invisible foot” is a play on and an allusion to Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market. The play comes from my interest in growth . When I encounter plants that grow without limit and take over the rest of my yard, I call them weeds. When cells in a body do the same thing, we call it cancer. But in the socio-economic domain, that behavior gets called capitalism—or if we are being kind, perhaps late-stage, financial capitalism. No physical scientist can imagine a system that keeps on growing forever. Nonetheless classical economics and the political leaders of our time posit an economy that does just that.