It also shows how their writing began with straightforward policy problems rather than abstract. [fact]
Beginning the story of neoliberalism with the Stubenring in the 1920s rather than with Mont Pèlerin in 1947 deflates the self-heroizing narrative of lonely embattled intellectuals and reveals the world in which future neoliberals formed their principles. It also shows how their writing began with straightforward policy problems rather than abstract contemplation. … Though Mises claimed that “no other calling was more desirable to me as that of a university professor,” in many ways the Chamber of Commerce remained his most characteristic milieu, and his policy suggestions remained remarkably consistent. He began his career in Austria in the last years of the Habsburg Empire, advocating strenuously for lower corporate taxes on industry, and ended it in the last years of the First Austrian Republic, arguing for the same. … Even if he is remembered for his work on social philosophy and theories of money and credit, Mises earned his livelihood for much of his adult life as a forthright advocate for the needs of business, including with the Chamber of Commerce in the 1920s and 1930s, and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Foundation for Economic Education after his emigration to the United States.
Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 119