Ludwig von Mises Quotes About Economy
-
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.
→ -
The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.
→ -
Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.
→ -
Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied... He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.
→ -
Credit expansion is the governments' foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.
→ -
Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.
→ -
There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.
→ -
What vitiates entirely the socialists economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy.
→ -
The market steers the capitalistic economy. It directs each individual's activities into those channels in which he best serves the wants of his fellow-men. The market alone puts the whole social system of private ownership of the means of production and free enterprise in order and provides it with sense and meaning.
→ -
Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.
→ -
The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.
→ -
In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.
→ -
Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches.
→ -
Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
→ -
There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about.
→ -
Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
→ -
The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world.
→ -
The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.
→ -
What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups-or classes-of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.
→ -
The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybodys actions aim at the satisfaction of other peoples needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens.
→ -
Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.
→ -
A famous, very often quoted phrase says: "That government is best, which governs least." I do not believe this to be a correct description of of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it is established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy.
→ -
The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.
→ -
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
→ -
The truth is that capitalism has not only multiplied population figures, but at the same time, improved the people's standard of living in an unprecedented way. Neither economic thinking nor historical experience suggests that any other social system could be as beneficial to the masses as capitalism. The results speak for themselves. The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: Si monumentum requires, circumspice.
→ -
The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow. Every advance first comes into being as the luxury of a few rich people, only to become, after a time, an indispensable necessity taken for granted by everyone. Luxury consumption provides industry with the stimulus to discover and introduce new, things. It is one of the dynamic factors in our economy. To it we owe the progressive innovations by which the standard of living of all strata of the population has been gradually raised.
→ -
Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
→ -
Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.
→ -
The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: 'If you seek his monument, look around.'
→ -
The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.
→
Related Authors
-
Israel Kirzner Economist -
David D. Friedman Economist -
Adam Smith Philosopher -
Walter Block Economist -
Llewellyn Rockwell Author -
Thomas Woods Historian -
Murray Rothbard Economist -
Olavo de Carvalho Philosopher -
Friedrich August von Hayek Economist -
Hans-Hermann Hoppe Economist -
Carl Menger Economist -
Ron Paul Former U.S. Representative -
John Maynard Keynes Economist -
Henry Hazlitt Journalist -
Milton Friedman Economist -
James M. Buchanan Economist -
Frederic Bastiat Economist -
Joseph A. Schumpeter Economist -
Ayn Rand Novelist