The liberal economist F. A. Hayek wrote in 1976 that: "It is probably a misfortune that, especially in the USA, popular writers like Samuel Smiles...have defended free enterprise on the ground that it regularly rewards the deserving, and it bodes ill for the future of the market order that this seems to have become the only defence of it which is understood by the general public. That it has largely become the basis of the self-esteem of the businessman often gives him an air of self-righteousness which does not make him more popular".