Professor Gavin Kennedy of Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy is perfectly right.

He also comments on a previous AccountingSolver post about the invisible hand:
I agree that Ren’s exposition of the invisible hand that ‘The most common interpretation of the invisible hand is: in pursuing self-interest, individuals promote the common good’, but the trouble is that this is not what Adam Smith wrote.
It is what modern economists from the mid-20th century began to assert Adam Smith was the originator of such a theory, mainly to give justification to their theories of how markets work. Smith didn’t introduce ‘the invisible hand to economics’; …read more

Economics came to be called the dismal science because of Thomas Malthus who observed that population growth was several times faster than food production and would lead to starvation and wars.

Recently, Thailand and Vietnam –rice producing countries from which the Philippines (one of the countries in Southeast Asia with the highest population growth rate) imports most of its rice to augment deficits in its rice stocks– declared a cutback in its exports of rice to keep food at home.

Is Malthus being proven right?
Balance Sheet graphics by Ren Garcia / images from Microsoft Clipart

While Adam Smith introduced the invisible hand to economics, Thomas Malthus caused economics to be called the dismal science. Malthus observed that population was growing at a rate several times faster than food production, eventually leading to starvation and wars.
The World Grains Production Balance Sheet shows that there might be some truth in Malthus’ prediction:

Experts predict a food crisis in the near term. In developed economies, it is still just a more than usual increase in food prices. There are shortages in some countries. In others, there are food riots.

Can the balance be sustained?
Balance Sheet graphics …read more