By the early 1940s Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, and Henry Simons in the United States, Wilhelm Röpke in Geneva, and Friedrich Hayek and Lionel Robbins in London all recognized a broad scope for the government to intervene, with benefi cial effects, in the workings of the economy and the distribution of goods. All of them manifested reservations about the effects of unhindered competition and increasing skepticism toward the social and po liti cal viability of laissezfaire.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 466