While free market economics is regarded by many today as an old conservative idea, it was in fact one of the most revolutionary concepts to emerge in the long history of ideas. For centuries landmark intellectual figures from Plato to Machiavelli had discussed which principles wise thinkers might propose to guide personal, social, and political actions or which policies wise leaders might impose for the benefit of society in various ways. Now, for the first time, it was argued that–in the economy at least–all of this was giving “a most unnecessary attention,” in Adam’s Smith’s words, to things that could be sorted out better by vast numbers of individuals interacting with one another, and making their own mutual accommodations, than by those who presumed to guide them from above.

–Thomas Sowell, On Classical Economics, p. 189.