The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. -Adam Smith

Adam Smith, the archetype called up by economists and those staunch defenders of free markets everywhere and only everywhere was a government bureaucrat whose examples were lifted from literary accounts of tourists who never saw nor worked in, nor owned a “pin factory.”

does this pose an irony, a paradox, a universal truth?