And very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

From Book IV, Chapter II, paragraph IX of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. It is interesting how the same words can yield new or additional insight over time.

Smith is famous for the term invisible hand of the marketplace. The concept that in a complex system, individual actions towards one goal can unintentionally yield system wide benefits not otherwise planned for. Here is that famous passage clearly and vividly rendering a complex concept.

But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value, every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

As an International Economics major, I am well familiar with the passage, having revisited it a number of times over the years. Familiar as it is, some minor nudge in perspective can yield additional insight.

In this instance, for whatever reason, my cognitive focus shifted to the end of the passage rather than the beginning.

By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

And really, it is the sentence in the middle.

"I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." Looking around the OECD and the US, we are nearly buried with illustrative examples of this quarter millennia old drop of wisdom. Here in the US we have the subprime mortgage market debacle engineered by bureaucrats seeking to increase the public good by forcing banks to make riskier loans. We have the cash for clunkers boondoggle which now make used cars so much more expensive for the poorer income quintile population. We have the billions of dollars that have disappeared down the rathole of solar panel manufacturing subsidies and for corn ethanol conversions which manage to make both energy and food more expensive. We have the trillion dollar student loan bubble about to burst all over us and which, under the noblest of guises, has immiserated so many futures. We have the billions of pounds of weight people have gained following government food guidelines.

Smith's observation is well supported today. And of course he has to add that dour Calvinist knife twist, "It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it."

Something so stupid you don't have to dissuade a sentient being from doing it, but rendered more artfully. It echoes of Orwell's comment about an idea so stupid only an academic would believe it to be true.