Mises took this line of thought further in his major work Human Action, where he claimed that the very idea of a 'physiological minimum of subsistence' was an invention of 'demagogues'. The claim that 'a definite quantity of calories is needed to keep a man healthy and progenitive, and a further definite quantity to replace the energy expended in working', was untenable, he argued. In the attempt to determine human needs, Mises saw an attempt to make humans the material of a despotic system of 'breeding and feeding' that deprived them of their margin of freedom.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 212