I viewed the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical, and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market. —John Stossel
The Achilles heel of the left is in discourse. Because their ideas fail. They have no way of proving to you that socialism works. So what we need to do is fight on that advantage. It’s the battle of ideas — it’s the field that we’re good in. But if we keep on fighting with each other on who is more “pure”, then our countries for sure are going to be lost. —Gloria Alvarez
Hayek’s work on price theory is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project. One can’t understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek. —Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia
In government, the worse an agency performs, the more money it can claim from a legislature. If state-run schools fail to educate children, then obviously they need more money… If the welfare state fails to reduce, or actually increases, poverty then obviously, say the bureaucrats, we need to expand welfare programs even further. —Thomas DiLorenzo, The Problem with Socialism
The greatest gains against poverty in the United States occurred when government was least involved. —Tom Woods
A businessman’s success depends on his intelligence, his knowledge, his productive ability, his economic judgment—and on the voluntary agreement of all those he deals with: his customers, his suppliers, his employees, his creditors or investors. A bureaucrat’s success depends on his political pull. A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not—and the more advanced the stage of a country’s statism, the wider and more discretionary the powers wielded by a bureaucrat. If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.
A businessman cannot force you to work for him or to accept the wages he offers; you are free to seek employment elsewhere and to accept a better offer, if you can find it. (Remember, in this context, that jobs do not exist “in nature,” that they do not grow on trees, that someone has to create the job you need, and that that someone, the businessman, will go out of business if he pays you more than the market permits him to pay you.) A bureaucrat can force you to work for him, when he achieves the totalitarian power he seeks; he can force you to accept any payment he offers—or none, as witness the forced labor camps in the countries of full statism.
The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.
—Ayn Rand
Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard
of living for a steadily increasing number of people. —Ludwig von Mises
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. —Frederic Bastiat
The only real cure for poverty is production. The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. —Henry Hazlitt
What protectionism teaches us is to do to ourselves in times of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war. —Henry George