The marvel is that the spontaneous system gives rise to a harmony of interests. Smith shows that the individual "neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it...By directing his industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this...led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention". The corollary of this is every distortion or discontinuation of spontaneous co-ordination must be sterile. This includes excessive redistribution after the fact. "Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands...Those unproductive hands...may consume so great a share...that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment."

The often-quoted "invisible hand", Adam Smith's totemic expression, is not the hand of God. The term just names the impersonal forces of spontaneous order. It is a system that, without asking much, manages to solve the enormous task of social coordination. The spontaneous order thus resulting from social interaction is what Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, calls the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty". This universal insight is by no means a naïve promise of happiness. All it promises - and that is no small thing - is social co-ordination. This system is a dynamic one that leads to results determined by the spontaneous interplay of individual forces within a framework of evolved or intelligently crafted rules, or the law. Smith is optimistic that the results of this interactive process are on the whole desirable.

Some scholars have attributed Smith's optimism to his alleged Deism. He seems to show a belief in a Creator who has endowed the world with certain natural laws accessible to human reason, but who refrains from intervening in the course of worldly events. True or false, this is no founding pillar of Smith's system. Smith places the individual dispositions and actions of men at the baseline of his analysis. If these dispositions and actions cannot be traced back to providence but are instead triggered by secular social learning or simply sheer evolution, this doesn't invalidate his logical result. The masterpiece that matters is the social co-ordination achieved through interaction, and the generation of useful institutions that channel life in human society.