In general in intell[ectual] affairs democracy is not a proper system of organizing. The best econ[omics] in the US is not the one the public would elect; a science must impose the standards of an elite upon a profession … Affairs of science, and intellectual life generally, are not to be conducted on democratic procedures. One cannot establish a mathem[atical] theorem by a vote, even a vote of mathematicians. An elite must emerge and instill higher standards than the public or the profession instinctively desire.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 107