Scripting the play In 1947, the year before Samuelson published his iconic Circular Flow diagram, a small laissez-faire band of wannabe economic scriptwriters – including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and Frank Knight – gathered in the Swiss resort of Mont Pèlerin to start drafting what they hoped would one day become the dominant economic story. Inspired by the pro-market writings of classical liberals such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo they established what they called a ‘neoliberal’ agenda. Its aim, they said, was to push back hard against the threat of state
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