As early as 1936 John Maynard Keynes pointed out that “the ideas of economists and political philosophers … are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.” F. A. Hayek, one of Keynes’s early opponents, added the caveat that “economists have this great influence only in the long run and indirectly.”

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 608