Adam Smith published "Wealth of Nations" in 1776—the same year that Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence. 

The two events are unrelated, of course, and, of the two works, I suggest that Smith’s has been the more influential.

Smith asserted that an unregulated economy in which each individual were free to pursue their own sense of what was good for them, their utility function, would yield the maximally efficient distribution of goods and services. Smith argued