Russ Roberts

Now, that gets laughed at a lot.

The truth is it is an extraordinary phenomenon that is underappreciated, but it should not be overappreciated.

The underappreciated part is that over the last maybe 10, 15 years, hundreds of millions of Chinese scientists,

Citizens and people have moved from the countryside into the cities of China.

Hundreds of millions.

One of the greatest migrations, probably the greatest migration of people in human history, certainly from rural to urban areas.

Well, I assume a lot of those people started sending their kids to school.

And I assume a lot of those kids started using pencils.

That ever affect your life in America?

Do you ever say, oh, I wish I could find a pencil, but of course I can't because they're all going to the Chinese.

Oh, there must have been a department set up to deal with that shortage, but there wasn't.

That's what modern economists mean by the invisible hand.

We didn't have to worry about the availability of pencils.

That's the invisible hand.

It's invisible, so we don't fully appreciate it.

Now, you don't want to carry it too far.

It doesn't solve every problem.

It doesn't solve pollution.

A lot of things require legislation, regulation, and so on.

Smith was not an anarchist.