Academic elites needed to be protected from coercion by students, the state, and the faculty. Stigler regarded the university as unreliable in doing so. Stigler then proceeded to imagine how to leave aside the unproductive 96 percent and provide “care and banqueting” for the productive 4 percent. He posed the question: “Is the university a sensible base of operations for the research scholars?”

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 142