For those who have any exposure to the subject, Adam Smith is the father of modern economics. Few have heard of Richard Cantillon. Both wrote on the subject of wealth creation, Cantillon in Essay on the Nature of Trade in General and Smith in The Wealth of Nations. Of the two, Cantillon, who preceded Smith, may have had a firmer grasp on the dynamics of wealth creation. Cantillon is considered the father of entrepreneurship, whereas Adam Smith seemed to go out of his way to dismiss the importance of that concept. With the benefit of two more centuries of economic experience, the twentieth-century economist Ludwig von Mises saw entrepreneurship in a light similar to Cantillon’s view: “Those who confuse entrepreneurship and management close their eyes to the economic problem. . . . The
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