On October 10, 1973, Austrian-born American economist, Ludwig von Mises (pictured above) died.
Two-hundred fifty-nine years earlier, the French law-maker and Jansenist Pierre le Pesant,
sieur de Boisguilbert (pictured below right) died.
Both economists were known for their defenses of freer markets: le Pesant for pioneering the critique of mercantilism, arguing that a nation’s wealth consisted in what its people produce and trade; Mises for systematizing economic theory and advancing the critique of both socialism and latter-day mercantalism (what he called “interventionism”).