… is from page 67 of the 2007 Liberty Fund edition of Ludwig von Mises’s 1949 magnum opus, Human Action:
It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.
Yes, but only for sound economics – the economics of scholars such as Adam Smith, J.B. Say, Frederic Bastiat, Carl Menger, Alfred Marshall, Frank Knight, Fritz Machlup, Ronald Coase, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, Armen Alchian, Yale Brozen, James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Leland Yeager, Harold Demsetz, Gary Becker, Bruce Yandle, Julian Simon, Deirdre McCloskey, Robert Higgs, David Friedman, and George Selgin (and, also, Austrians such as Mises, Hayek, and Israel Kirzner). There are, of course, other species of economics, such as Keynesianism and much of modern welfare economics, that assure those in power that their conceits are justified – that the man-in-the-street’s economic superstitions are well-grounded in reality – that sufficient concentrations of power can in fact make miracles occur.
