This approach to the economic agent as dupe never caught on, either within economics or in vernacular discourse. Leaving neoclassical economics aside (because it could never condone pervasive massive disconnect between purchases and ends), it is of some interest to explore why average people in pursuit of everyday ends could not be brought to entertain the idea that much of the economy was devoted to the manipulation of their beliefs and actions, in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. The answer has something to do with another neoliberal technology, this one bound up with the innovation of “murketing.”

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 390