Question

Use the excerpt to answer the question.

“[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity . . . they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.”

What economic system does the evidence support?

(1 point)

communism

utopian socialism

mercantilism

laissez-faire capitalism

Answer 1

laissez-faire capitalism

The passage invokes Adam Smith’s "invisible hand" and the idea that self-interested actions in free markets unintentionally benefit society—key principles of laissez-faire capitalism.