the.com/invisible hand

means The idea that people pursuing their own self-interest in a free market unintentionally produce benefits for society as a whole.

from Coined by Adam Smith, who used the phrase a few scattered times in his writing — most famously in 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776) — to describe how individual self-interest, channeled through competition and exchange, can coordinate economic activity as if some unseen force were guiding it toward the public good. Smith never meant it as a grand universal law; later economists inflated it into the celebrated shorthand for free-market self-regulation it is today.