I recently came across "The Grumbling Hive," a poem written by Bernard Mandeville in 1705. Although long and difficult to read, this remarkable poem explores how the market process channels human vices toward productive ends (people can only get what they want by providing for others). Although "The Grumbling Hive" is tame by today’s standards, it created a firestorm upon publication, and was widely denounced for supposedly thumbing its nose at morality (the 1723 edition would earn Mandeville an indictment for nuisance). I’ll let the poem speak for itself.
While Adam Smith made the same point (albeit much more tactfully) seventy-one years later, "The Grumbling Hive" is a bit of a “lost” work in the history of economics and certainly deserves more attention.
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