4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
The alternatives among which a person chooses are creations of his own thought, not a menu the world hands down — and from that premise Shackle builds this compact statement of subjectivist economics, written to introduce Alexander Shand's survey of the tradition from Plato to Hayek. Choice becomes creative rather than calculative, its consequences unknowable in advance, so that the future is not merely unknown but partly made. Non-determinism and the unpredictability of history-to-come follow, along with a political corollary: central coercion cannot render human affairs predictable, only extinguish the dispersed invention that renews economic life. Markets earn their place by disseminating knowledge after events occur, never by abolishing uncertainty.
Subjectivism credits the individual with the power of the alchemist who can throw into his crucible whatever his fancy has invented but knows not what will emerge.