The Invisible Hand
Format: DVD | Streaming | Download
Length:
14:37
Grade Level: 9-12+
Closed Captioned:
Streaming/DVD: English | Albanian | Armenian | Georgian | Italian | Russian | Ukrainian | Uzbek
How can pursuing your self-interest help others?
The entire global economy boils down to two people: a buyer and a seller. And the system works best when the seller has the buyer's best interests at heart. But even if the seller is acting strictly in his own interest, good things happen—we get what we want!
Over 200 years ago, a Scottish philosopher named Adam Smith came up with revolutionary ideas about how things work. Those ideas are easy to see in the world around us.
Visit a bakery in Scotland to witness supply and demand, and to learn how businesses know the prices at which they can sell their products and what they should offer customers. Then go to eBay to see the Invisible Hand in action, showing how economic systems can self-regulate without a "Man of Systems" micro-managing every transaction, and how trust and reputation are critical to sellers.
