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Pat Gunning wrote:  
 
> Again, I don't see your point. Perhaps you are thinking that he has slipped  
> in an anti-free international trade argument (which, by the way, need not  
> be related to the invisible hand assertion, although I suspect that in  
> Smith's mind it was.) I doubt it, since other parts of this book make his  
> views on free trade clear and since there is nothing in the context of the  
> clause that you quoted to suggest that he was interested in international  
> trade here. All he seems to be writing about in this clause is that a  
> capital owner who uses his capital abroad, other things equal, encounters  
> greater risk of loss, presumably because he is not a citizen of that other  
> country, because he is not familiar with the norms and laws of the country,  
> or because of communication and transportation costs. 
>  
 
 
I don't believe it is an anti-free trade position by Smith, but I think the passage does
demonstrate a less than fully developed concept of economic efficiency in an open trading
system, at least in the sense that we understand all the conditions today.
 
I also believe that many readers are reading the "as if" into the invisible hand phrase as
an "unconscious" attempt to soften into a metaphor a rather blatant attempt to justify
free markets with recourse to traditional anthropomorphic belief and imagery. Smith may
have actually believed that free markets enable individuals to answer their "calling" or
he may have thought that the insertion of an invisible guiding hand in the context of the
WON might make the stark empiricism of markets more acceptable to the clergy, but,
whatever, the concept set backs somewhat the scientific achievement of the work in my
opinion.
 
Chas Anderson 
 
 
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