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Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) has been described as a revolutionary, an author of scholarly books and popular tracts, a social philosopher, a successful entrepreneur and a remarkable Renaissance man.
Above all, however, he was a great economist. He might best be described as a proto-Austro-Misesian, the author of the law of markets, known as Say's law, and as the first to coin the term "entrepreneur." Say's concern with the average interested citizen and his zeal for economic education for the masses is most apparent in this classic work, A Treatise on Political Economy.
The book has been heralded by Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and many modern Austrians, who depend on his insights to assist in the understanding of markets and prices. Keynes only purported to refute him, but Mises said that Keynes only struck down a strawman; Mises was a follower of Say's perspective on the stability of market structures.
Say was not only a more sophisticated economist than Keynes; he was better than Smith in many ways. Larry Sechrest writes of this book: "With pen and ink, Adam Smith made the entrepreneur invisible. J.B. Say brings him back to life and to the center of the stage."

Now, money is precisely that commodity.
The two qualities, that give a general preference of value, in the shape of the current money of the country, to the same amount of value in any other shape, are:—
1. The aptitude, in the character of an intermedial object of exchange, to help all who have any exchange or any purchase to make, that is to say, every member of the community, towards the specific object of desire. The general confidence, that money is a commodity acceptable to every body, inspires the assurance of being able, by one act of exchange only, to procure the immediate object of desire, whatever it may be; whereas, the possessor of any other commodity can never be sure that it will be acceptable to the possessor of that particular object of desire.
2. The capability of subdivision and precise apportionment to the amount of the intended purchase; which capability is a recommendation to all who have purchases to make; in other words, to every member of the community. Every one is, therefore, anxious to barter for money the product whereof he holds a superfluity, and which is commonly that he himself produces; because, in addition to the other quality above stated, he feels sure of being able to buy with its value in that shape as small or as large a portion of corresponding value, as he may require; and because he may buy, whenever, and wherever he pleases, such objects as he may desire to have in lieu of the product he has sold originally.

Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) was the leading French political economist in the first third of the 19th century. His major theoretical work was the Traité d’économie politique (1803) which went through many editions, revisions, and translations during his lifetime. It was very influential in the U.S. during the 19thC. He was the originator of the theory that “supply creates its own demand” (called Say’s Law of Markets), which was Mill’s restatement of Say’s “products are paid for with products.” The idea that business booms are associated with temporary overproduction that adjusts itself because of the incentives for producers to sell their output was one implication of Say’s Law.