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Free Markets Quotes

Browse 42 quotes about Free Markets.

Free Markets Quotes

“Hence the great irony: Hayek, one of the greatest champions of individual liberty and economic freedom the world has ever known, believed that knowledge was communal. Dewey, the champion of socialism and collectivism, believed that knowledge was individual. Hayek's is a philosophy that treats individuals as the best judges of their own self-interests, which in turn yield staggering communal cooperation. Dewey's was the philosophy of a giant, Monty Pythonesque crowd shouting on cue: "We're All Individuals!”

PhilosophyPoliticsKnowledgeSocialismFree Markets
Book:The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas
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“The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.”

GovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyDemocracyMastersTradeLibertarianSocialismCommunismAnarchyIndividualismRulersFreeTheftCoercionNatural LawCollectivismStateStatismVoluntaryismIndividual RightsLaissez FaireIndividual FreedomNatural RightsNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismSubjugationTotalitarianFree MarketsPetitionVoluntaryist
Author:Larken Rose
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“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”

GovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyLibertarianCommunismAnarchyIndividualismAggressionCoercionCollectivismFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismAustrian School Of EconomicsNapFree MarketsSelf OwnershipInitiation Of ForceVoluntaryist
Book:A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics
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“Collectivism is the "philosophy" of every cockroach and sewer rat: "If I want it, I must need it, and if I need it, I have a right to it, and if I have a right to it, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get it." The fact that such an inherently animalistic, short-sighted, anti-human viewpoint is now painted by some as compassionate and "progressive" does not make it any more sane, or any less dangerous.”

PhilosophyGovernmentEvilPoliticsIndividualFreedomLibertyRightsLibertarianSocialismCommunismAnarchyIndividualismCoercionNatural LawCollectivismStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNatural RightsNon Aggression PrincipleAncapFree MarketsSelf Ownership
Author:Larken Rose
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“There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.”

GovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyCapitalismLibertarianTyrannyCommunismControlTaxationTheftFree TradeStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleSubjugationFreaksFree MarketsRegulationsInitiation Of Force
Author:Ayn Rand
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“The designers of the international economy sternly demand that the poor accept market discipline, but they ensure that they themselves are protected from its ravages, a useful arrangement that goes back to the origins of modern industrial capitalism and played a large role in dividing the world into rich and poor societies, the first and third worlds.”

CapitalismEconomicsInequalityEconomics PhilosophyFree Market CapitalismFree MarketsFree Market Ideology
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“In general, markets have well-known inefficiencies. One is that transactions do not take into account the effect on others who are not party to them. These so-called externalities can be huge. That is particularly so in the case of financial institutions. Their task is to take risks, and if well managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. To themselves. Under capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others. Risk is underpriced, because systemic risk is not priced into decisions. That leads to repeated crisis, naturally. This inherent deficiency of markets is well known.”

CapitalismBanking SystemBanksFree Market CapitalismFinancial RiskFree MarketsFree Market Ideology
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“A time of ongoing cultural revolution when the adversaries of Christianity have made plain their intent to use the state machinery to promote radical social ideologies hardly seems an opportune moment to discuss how the rights of property might be compromised. Private property is an important bulwark against the ongoing anti-Christian campaign. Although opponents of the free market will doubtless claim that they wish to interfere with the rights of property only to this or that extent, or only to bring about this or that allegedly desirable social outcome, there can be little excuse for such naiveté in our day. No Christian should want to build up an institution that he would be terrified to see in the hands of his ideological opponents.”

CapitalismSocialismFree MarketFree MarketsFree Market IdeologyDistributismCatholic Social Teaching
Book:Beyond Distributism
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“In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state’s power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear that the welfare state is an evil the same as every restriction of freedom.”

FreedomLibertyCapitalismEconomicsCharityLibertarianSocialismCommunismWelfareFascismTaxationCoercionCollectivismFree TradeStatismLaissez FaireAustrian School Of EconomicsFree MarketsAustrian Economics
Author:Wilhelm Röpke
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“When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule--who is the elite--is never over. For a long time, some people in Europe and North America settled on the idea that various forms of democratic, meritocratic, and economic competition are the fairest alternative to inherited or ordained power. But even in countries that were never occupied by the Red Army and never ruled by Latin American populists, democracy and free markets can produce unsatisfying outcomes, especially when badly regulated, or when nobody trusts the regulators, or when people are entering the contest from very different starting points. The losers of these competitions were always, sooner or later, going to challenge the value of the competition itself.”

LeadershipDemocracyCapitalismCompetitionElitesRulersRulingFree Markets
Book:Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
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“Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.”

ScienceCapitalismEconomicsBoundariesRegulationFree Markets
Book:23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
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“Another tried-and-true method for bending subjects to the state's will is inducing guilt. Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as "unconscionable greed, "materialism",, or "excessive affluence." Profit-making can be attacked as "exploitation" and "usury", mutually beneficial exchanges are denounced as selfishness, and somehow, with the conclusion always being drawn that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the public sector. The induced guilt makes the public more ready to do just that. While individual persons tend to indulge in "selfish greed", the failure of the state's rulers to engage in exchanges is supposed to signify their devotion to higher and nobler causes, parasitic predation being apparently morally and aesthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work.”

Austrian School Of EconomicsFree MarketsCultural MarxismState Power
Book:Anatomy of the State
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“What is peculiar and novel to our age is that the principal goal of politics in every advanced society is not, strictly speaking, a political one, that is today, it is not concerned with human beings as persons and citizens, but with human bodies. ... In all technologically advanced countries today, whatever political label they give themselves, their policies have, essentially, the same goal: to guarantee to every member of society, as a psychophysical organism, the right to physical and mental health.”

FreedomResponsibilityLibertyRightsDoctorsMedicineLibertarianSocialismHealth CareTaxationPsychiatryViolationCoercionSystemCollectivismStatismLaissez FaireSocialized MedicineFree MarketsNanny State
Author:W.H. Auden
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“Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo.”

PoliticsBeliefPeaceFreedomLibertyDemocracyCapitalismSlaveryTradeProsperityLibertarianSocialismAnarchyIrrationalFreeTaxationTheftTotalitarianismCoercionSuperstitionCollectivismStatismVoluntaryismMarketsLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleEmpireSubjugationAustrian School Of EconomicsFree MarketsSelf OwnershipVoluntaryistUseful IdiotsCommuni
Author:Robert Higgs
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“After the predicted disaster occurred, an “emerging consensus” developed among economists “on the need for macroprudential supervision” of financial markets, that is, “paying attention to the stability of the financial system as a whole and not just its individual parts.” Two prominent international economists added that “there is growing recognition that our financial system is running a doomsday cycle. Whenever it fails, we rely on lax money and fiscal policies to bail it out. This response teaches the financial sector: take large gambles to get paid handsomely, and don’t worry about the costs—they will be paid by taxpayers” through bailouts and lost jobs, and the financial system “is thus resurrected to gamble again—and to fail again.” The system is a “doom loop,” in the words of the official of the Bank of England responsible for financial stability.”

CapitalismEconomicsBankingFinancial CrisisBanking SystemEconomics PhilosophyFree Market CapitalismFree MarketsFree Market Ideology
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“When crises hit the South, the masters of the international economy turn to the IMF solution. The costs are transferred to the public, which had nothing to do with the risky choices but is now compelled to pay the costs: the poor countries are instructed to raise interest rates, slow the economy, pay their debts (to the rich), privatize (so that the Western corporations can buy their assets), and suffer. The instructions for the rich are virtually the opposite: lower interest rates, stimulate the economy, forget about debts, consume, have the government take over (but don’t “nationalize”—the takeover is a temporary measure to hand it back to the owners in better shape). And the public has almost no voice in determining these outcomes, any more than poor peasants have a voice in being subjected to cruel structural adjustment programs.”

EconomicsPrivatizationFree Market CapitalismImfFree MarketsFree Market IdeologyPredatory CapitalismFree Market Economics
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“In theory, inherent market inefficiencies and perverse incentives could be overcome by efficient regulation. But the same deep-seated tendencies that concentrate wealth and power in private tyrannies reduce the likelihood of such steps. In late 2009 there seemed to be one faint hope that Congress might institute some meaningful regulation: proposals by Senator Christopher Dodd, chair of the Senate Banking Committee. But Dodd succumbed to Wall Street pressure and abandoned his proposal in December 2009. One of its components was a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency intended to “crack down on abusive and risky lending practices that helped fuel last year’s financial crisis,” Michael Kranish commented in a rare press report. “Banks and other financial institutions have fought hard to kill the proposal,” he adds. And succeeded. He quotes Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor who originated the idea for the agency: “When all the dust settles, the real question for the history books will be whether Congress was able to create an independent consumer agency with the tools necessary to end abusive practices and to prevent future crises.” The answer appears to be a loud no, in our business-run democracy.”

CapitalismNeoliberalismFree Market CapitalismFree MarketsFree Market IdeologyElizabeth WarrenFree Market EconomicsMichael KranishChristopher Dodd
Book:Hopes and Prospects
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“As long as government has the power to regulate business, business will control government by funding the candidate that legislates in their favor. A free-market thwarts lobbying by taking the power that corporations seek away from government! The only sure way to prevent the rich from buying unfair government influence is to stop allowing government to use physical force against peaceful people. Whenever government is allowed to favor one group over another, the rich will always win, since they can "buy" more favors, overtly or covertly, than the poor.”

PoliticsPeaceFreedomLibertySocietyEconomicsProsperityLibertarianIndividualismCoercionCollectivismStatismVoluntaryismIndividual RightsLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapFree MarketsRegulationsCrony Capitalism
Author:Mary J. Ruwart
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“Think what it implies when you say that a country needs leaders. In your day-to-day life, you interact with all sorts of other individuals. And that's all society is: the collective name for lots of INDIVIDUALS. But for some inexplicable reason, we're taught to believe that one huge, arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of one human livestock farm--I mean, "country") need some control freaks acting as intermediaries in order to interact with a different arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of some other human livestock farm--I mean, "country"). Because gee, how could I and some random person in the middle of China possibly leave each other alone if we didn't each have a gang of narcissistic sociopaths claiming to "represent" us? Oh, wait a minute. That's exactly how and why pretty much ALL wars happen: because different gangs of power-happy psychos pit their pawns against each other in violent conflict, while claiming to "represent" subsets of humanity. One more example of how "government" is a problem posing as its own solution.”

WarGovernmentPoliticsPeaceFreedomLibertyLibertarianAnarchyCoercionStatismVoluntaryismLaissez FaireNon Aggression PrincipleAncapFree Markets
Author:Larken Rose
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