Not many people can be bothered to actually read Hayek or Buchanan or Milton Friedman or (even) Ayn Rand; but a whole lot more people drink fair trade coffee from time to time, watch Big Brother or Jerry Springer; have a Facebook page they desultorily update; contemplate whether to buy insurance; find themselves short until payday; are worried enough to check their FICO score; spring for a lottery ticket at the checkout; feel conflicted at the sight of a scruffy panhandler; worry about the foreclosure sale down the street; commiserate with friends over what to think about the British summer of riots in 2011; take medication to lose weight; or anguish over whether to visit a fertility clinic. In these thousand and one little encounters spread over a lifetime, the average person begins to absorb a set of images, causal scenarios, and precepts that begin to add up to something approaching a worldview.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 431