Answer :
Answer:
“They are led by an invisible hand to share out life’s necessities in just about the same way that they would have been shared out if the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants. And so without intending it, without knowing it, they advance the interests of the society ·as a whole·, and provide means for the survival of the species.”
What he was doing was stating the principle of supply and demand. What people want more of, they pay more for, and those profits signal producers to produce more because there are profits to be made.
In exactly the same way, surpluses mean people do not want what is being produced, and suppliers learn this through the losses they incur from unsold product.
As an aside, the use in the graphic of scare-quotes around “equilibrium” should be noted. An economy is never in equilibrium, because people’s wants change constantly. Markets tend toward equilibrium, from where ever things are at the moment, and then in the next moment tend toward equilibrium from there, exactly like a juggler trying to balance a spinning plate on his hand in never ceasing movement.
Profit and loss. Guided, as if by an invisible hand, to produce what people want in the quantity they want, without anyone consciously directing that production and distribution.
