"Amidst the morass of bland economic writings on taxation, Jean-Baptiste Say stands out like a beacon light. It is true that he was unusually devoted – even in that generally liberal era – to laissez-faire and the rights of private property, and only waffled a very few times in that creed. But for some reason, most laissez-faire and libertarian thinkers in history have not really considered taxation to be an invasion of the rights of private property." #jbsay #taxation #aphet #economics

"Say's excellent discussion of money, like most of the rest of his doctrine, has been grievously neglected by historians of thought. He begins by setting forth a theory of how money originates that was later to be developed in a famous article by Carl Menger and would form the basis of the first chapter in every money and banking text for generations. Money, he pointed out, originates out of barter." https://mises.org/library/book/austrian-perspective-history-economic-thought #jbsay #menger #money #economics #aphet

"A particularly outstanding feature of J.B. Say's treatise is that he was the first economist to think deeply about the proper methodology of his discipline, and to base his work, as far as he could, upon that methodology. From previous economists and from his own study, he arrived at the unique method of economic theory, what Ludwig von Mises was, over a century later, to call ‘praxeology’." #jbsay #mises #praxeology #economics

"We shall see below the precise nature of Say's thought and his contributions, as well as his decidedly ‘French’ non-Smithian, and ‘pre-Austrian’ logical clarity and emphasis on the praxeologic axiomatic-deductive method, on utility as the sole source of economic value, on the entrepreneur, on the productivity of the factors of production, and on individualism." https://mises.org/library/book/austrian-perspective-history-economic-thought #jbsay #aphet #rothbard #economics #praxeology