No turkey czar

My niece invited the extended family to her apartment for Thanksgiving this year. She created a  Facebook event called "A Very 2020 Thanksgiving." Then she cancelled it because our governor's new covid restrictions forbid multiple household gatherings. Yes, a very 2020 Thanksgiving.

My household had no turkey. But if you did, I think I know how you got it. You didn't order it special from a local shop or farm. You put it in your cart on a normal trip to the grocery store. You knew there would be plenty of reasonably priced turkeys for all who wanted one.

Thousands of people made that happen:

"Poultry farmers, of course, but also the feed distributors, and the truckers who brought it to the farm, not to mention the architect who designed the hatchery, the workmen who built it, and the technicians who keep it running. The bird had to be slaughtered and defeathered and inspected and transported and unloaded and wrapped and priced and displayed. The people who accomplished those tasks were supported in turn by armies of other people accomplishing other tasks — from refining the gasoline that fueled the trucks to manufacturing the plastic in which the meat was packaged."

There is no turkey czar with a master plan, issuing orders, forcing these workers to cooperate. But they do cooperate. They made thousands of smart decisions independently. Why? To create an income and take care of their loved ones. 

"Free human beings freely interact, and the result is an array of goods and services more immense than the human mind can comprehend. No dictator, no bureaucracy, no supercomputer plans it in advance." 

Adam Smith called it the "invisible hand" of the free marketplace.

from the Boston Globe