When the Invisible Hand Needs a Heart
By Ana Guzmán Quintana
We are living in an era of constant innovation, exponential growth, and artificial intelligence that promises to redefine everything we do. People talk about productivity, competitiveness, technological disruption. But very rarely do we ask something essential: who takes care of what makes the economy possible in the first place?
Since Adam Smith, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that the invisible hand of the market (the pursuit of self-interest) generates collective prosperity. And it’s true: markets have created wealth, fueled creativity, and driven progress. But there is another force just as crucial, though far less celebrated: the invisible heart, a concept developed by Nancy Folbre to describe the immense care work that sustains human, social, and economic life… without appearing on any balance sheet.
And when something has no price, it usually receives no recognition. And when it receives no recognition, we run the risk of losing it.
The wealth we don’t measure and the cost we do pay
In Spain, unpaid care work would amount to almost 15% of GDP if it were valued economically. At a global level, the informal care sector is estimated to exceed 11 trillion dollars annually. Yet it doesn’t contribute to Social Security, nor does it add points to a professional career, generate economic power, or appear in indicators of progress. And that has effects as forceful and painful as lower birth rates (in Spain our fertility rate is 1.16, one of the lowest in the world), caregivers facing wage and pension gaps, exhausted families, and ultimately a society that demands more productivity from those who spend less time… producing people.
Because let’s be honest: the next generation of talent and taxpayers is shaped in homes, not in markets.
While we debate whether AI will replace jobs, we forget a simple truth: machines replicate tasks. The human heart raises people. Innovation means little if at the same time we weaken the very thing that will make our future leadership possible:
• Curious, creative, and emotionally healthy children.
• Adults capable of empathizing, collaborating, and caring.
• Families that function as the first space of social learning.
If we don’t value care, who will cultivate interpersonal skills, empathy, resilience, ethics… the only things truly irreplaceable by artificial intelligence?
It’s not about pitting economic freedom against social well-being. It’s about reconciling them: the invisible hand generates wealth, while the invisible heart makes it useful for living dignified lives.
Growth loses legitimacy when it benefits only a few, and social well-being becomes unsustainable when it suffocates economic dynamism.
We need an economic order in which:
-
Success is measured not only in terms of GDP, but in lives that improve
-
Care has economic and social value
-
Innovation is not a soulless race
-
Equality of opportunity begins at birth and is sustained over time
-
And efficiency is not built by sacrificing the dignity of those who care for others.
Assigning a price to recognize value
If we want a more prosperous and humane capitalism, we must dare to measure what truly matters. Because what is measured, counts. And what counts, gets protected. The economy needs the invisible hand. But it cannot survive without the invisible heart.
As we celebrate the advances of artificial intelligence, let us remember that the most valuable intelligence is still human. The kind that only emerges when someone cares, teaches, and accompanies.
Investing in care is not an emotional gesture. It is the most rational economic decision we can make as a society.