Dear Douglas, Allow me to start with your last point as the point of departure. You said: "People attack Mises and/or Hayek because they dislike the general idea of free market capitalism,..." Aside from the assignment of motives, which converts an otherwise interesting argument into a mere ad hominem, let me assure you that I am a supporter of free markets, which is precisely why I am an opponent of capitalism. Because before one is either a supporter or opponent of "free market capitalism," one must find an actual example of it to support or oppose. And in the entire history of this planet, no such example exists. Not one. Every successful capitalism looks more or less like ours. Not that there haven't been attempts to establish this Misean ideal, mostly before Mises. When the Liberals took over England in 1832, that was their goal. And it was a failure. In the United States, in the period from 1853 to 1953, the economy was in recession 40% of the time. Since the ascendency of Keynesian policies (of both the right and left, I might add), the economy has been in recession 15% of the time. So which of these periods describes a working economy? People did not rebel in 1848 because capitalism was working, but because it wasn't. People did not throw off the remnants of laissez-faire because they wearied of prosperity, but because they wearied of poverty on the one hand and insecurity (even for the rich) on the other. Now, I am not really a supporter of Keynes, and even less a supporter of what Keynesianism always becomes. But I do like things to work, and I think things working 85% of the time is better than working 60% of the time. Further, the "recessions" of the 15% were mild by the standards of the 40% economy; they would hardly have been noticed in those days by their standards. Granted, avoiding recession is not the only definition of a working economy, but even to those who disregard equilibrium, 40% is an absurd number, incompatible with any reasonable definition of a functioning economy. Therefore, there is no free-market capitalism for me (or you) to support or oppose. There is only the loosely or tightly planned capitalisms we actually see. And that is all we have ever seen. As Karl Polanyi put it, "Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not." I do not oppose "free-market capitalism" merely because one does not oppose a chimera; one only opposes (or supports) taking a chimera seriously as public policy. This brings us to the point where you disavow Pinochet, Reagan, Bush, and Thatcher as Hayekian politicians. Okay, but then you have another problem: there have been no Hayekian systems, and no real attempts to get one. But if that is the case, then you cannot claim that the system works. You may avoid, by your stratagem, having to admit that it fails, but neither can you say that it works. You must modify your support from the indicative ("it does work") to the subjunctive ("it would work if only..."), but that is to convert it from a fact to a wish. And you may indeed wish upon a star, even a star as high as Hayek, but that will never make it a science. As for myself, I am very suspicious of abstractions. If somebody says to me, "This works!" I reply, "Where? When? For how long?" Speaking scientifically, I think such skepticism is the safest attitude. But I think you are fundamentally wrong in this. Thatcher, Pinochet, Reagan, etc., made honest attempts to follow Hayek's model. They backed off because they had too. To repeat myself, your defense of Hayek is identical to the communist's defense of Marx: "It wasn't properly implemented." That's one possibility, for both cases. But the other possibility is that it was implemented and this is where is leads because of the law of unintended consequences. History is the only test of that law, the only test of any economic theory. I think you need to give proper consideration to the possibility that Reagan et al. were sincere, but that the system is impossible. They went as far as they could, and this is where it leads. As for the issue of the "obviousness" of Mises's work, I think Prof. Gani's reading is the more correct. In this, I don't think you are arguing with me, but with Mises, for Ludwig it was who claimed his praxeology has the same epistemological status as does mathematics or logic. Now, even the rudest man uses some numbers, even if he doesn't know what a first derivative is, and even the most unlettered applies some logic, even if he doesn't know how to spell "syllogism." But nobody praxeologizes unless he has gone to some very special schools or read some very special books. As for my knowledge of Austrian economics, well, what can I say? Only that I have read a fair amount and done my best, such as it is, to understand it fairly. But in the time honored academic tradition of "back at ya, buddy," I can well ask if you are really all that familiar with the critiques of Mises? Because I really don't think anybody really understands an idea unless they really understand the critiques of that idea. I will delay any comments on the Pinochet-Hayek connection (and we could add the Mises-Dolfuss connection) to another post, but those who want a quick read on the gory details can pick up Naomi Klein's "Disaster Capitalism." John C. M?daille