Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests.

" We were discussing the distribution of income and whether you should have progressive income taxes. There he became a visiting professor at New York University. In America Mises' work first influenced that of economists such as Benjamin Anderson Leonard Read and Henry Hazlitt as well as writers such as former radical Max Eastman legal scholar Sylvester J.

He became a prominent figure in the Austrian School of economic thought and is best known for his work on praxeology. Mises had a significant influence on the libertarian movement in the United States in the mid-20th century. Fearing a Nazi takeover of Switzerland where he was living at the time Mises emigrated to the United States in 1940.