Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we...

Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born...

There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies...

War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces...

None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have...

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world,...

the greater fool theory.” Although by any conventional measure it is folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter an Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool...

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is...

Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately it also brought mortis.

Just when we are in many ways moving to an ever greater validation of the sacredness of the individual person, our capacity to imagine a social fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing. This...

…The reason why we’re strippers, is invariably more boring, more grounded in nonexistential needs like money—and pragmatic concerns, like money.

The fallacy that dynamic processes must be modeled as if the system is in continuous equilibrium is probably the most important reason for the intellectual failure of neoclassical economics. Mathematics, science and engineering developed tools...

And that’s just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will...

This is the fly in the ointment of free-market capitalism. It cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner. On the contrary, the craving to increase profits...

You will miss a normal life while living a successful life, but not as much as the craving for a successful life while you were living a normal life.

This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called “literary economics,” as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the “new economic history.” A man does what he can, and in the...

Now, quite apart from the fact that, from the point of view of the Earther, socialism suffers the devastating liability of only exhibiting internal contradictions when you are trying to use it as an adjunct...

This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like to imagine we all start out as individuals who don’t owe each other anything....

The Palestinian territories are passing now through a suffocating economic crisis and that there is a bad need of supporting the Palestinian economy by all the countries of the world and to exert pressure on...

invest” my money.

Rivera’s admiration for Stalin was equaled only by his admiration for Henry Ford. By the 1920s and ‘30s, nearly every industrial country in Europe and Latin America, as well as the Soviet Union, had adopted...

Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of...

Then the shit hit the fan.

Where there is commerce there is peace.

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...

One the one hand, our economists treat human beings as rational actors making choices to maximize their own economic benefit. On the other hand, the same companies that hire those economists also pay for advertising...

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person...

It is certainly true that imitation is everywhere, from sport to business, from dancing to dressing, from driving to singing. In fact, imitation is at the heart of competitive behavior and of almost any kind...

What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian ‘il n’y a pas de rapport …’: if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship...

The fact that the United States has political, economic, and legal structures that do indeed create incentives to control hazards (in the workplace) is one the reasons the corporations have moved to Latin America and...

Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people,...

But the economy’s out of control. Money just doesn’t need human beings anymore. Most of us only get in the way.

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of...

In a basic agricultural society, it’s easy enough to swap five chickens for a new dress or to pay a schoolteacher with a goat and three sacks of rice. Barter works less well in a...

Civilization on Earth planet was equated with selfishness and greed; those people who lived in a civilized state exploited those who did not. There were shortages of vital commodities on Earth planet, and the people...

I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano’s Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose...

The number of games went up or down according to the brutal, elegant logic of the economics of fun:a certain amount of difficultyplusa certain amount of your friendsplusa certain amount of interesting strangersplusa certain amount...

Sustainability is a new idea to many people, and many find it hard to understand. But all over the world there are people who have entered into the exercise of imagining and bringing into being...

Tell your wives and your older children to bring with them dish pans and cooking pots. Tell them to bring their stirring spoons and ladles. Tell them to carry a mop over their shoulders. We’re...

CEOs should be measured by the value they create into the community, the shareholders and the members of the company.

Přestože byla většina opatření New Dealu později postupně zrušena, míra státních zásahů federální vlády do ekonomiky zůstala v USA od té doby již trvale na poměrně vysoké úrovni.

The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to...

The elimination of profit, whatever methods may be resorted to for its execution, must transform society into a senseless jumble.

Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.

One should attend carefully to the fear and desperation of the powerful. They understand very well the potential reach of the “ultimate weapon,” and only hope that those who seek a more free and just...

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

For the same reason a disease cannot be cured by more of the germ that caused it, the inflation and debt accumulation of the Obama years will not inflate our way out of it.

Economics has made good on its promise to deliver prosperity and democratic freedom to much of the world, but in doing away with the age-old problems of humanity, it has opened up a crisis of...

la propriété, c’est le vol!