The communists may not have done very well in the end, but I can’t help thinking of capitalism as merely the go-to religion of the greedy and selfish.

As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the simple reason that you can’t kill someone and trade with him too.

Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.

Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist...

Rand had changed a number of laws in Tear, especially those that weighed heavily on the poor, but he had been unable to change everything. He had not even known how to begin. Lews Therin...

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade…

The genuine object of debate raised by the [2008 financial] crisis ought to be how to overcome the short-termism to which we have been led by a consumerism intrinsically destructive of all genuine investment in...

Some places will, however, be left behind. Not every city will succeed, because not every city has been adept at adapting to the age of information, in which ideas are the ultimate creator of wealth.

Politicians have often declared that unbridled competition among financial intermediaries promotes failures that will harm the public. Although the evidence that competition does this is extremely weak, it has not stopped the state and federal...

The word ‘truth’ itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or...

need is not demand. Effective economic demand requires not merely need but corresponding purchasing power.

When distance and convenience sets in; the small, the various and the personal wither away.

The employment equation used to be built on a foundation of two-way loyalty. The world has changed. Today, successful employment relationships can only be sustained on a foundation of two-way honesty

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If...

too” rich, and benefiting the rest—the majority—of the people, they cannotoppose any tenable argument to those who are asking for more of this allegedlybeneficial policy. As long as any degree of inequality is left, there...

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Sustainability is best illustrated by those who sell food … just so they afford something to eat.

true Self Love and Social are the same.” While this is the foundation of liberal capitalism, Marx’s dialectical materialism is not different in its selection of the economy as the prime mover. In this way...

People above the line of bare subsistence in this age, and in all earlier ages, do not use the surplus which society has given them primarily for useful purposes. They do not seek to expand...

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and...

It appears – because it has been the case for twenty years – that every problem is solvable…that no matter how badly the world economy slumps there is a pain-free way out of it. Once...

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...

We must realize that growth is but an adolescent phase of life which stops when physical maturity is reached. If growth continues in the period of maturity it is called obesity or cancer. Prescribing growth...

Man is smart – If money would have grown on trees, we would have used green leaves as money.

Complexity is not an aesthetic criterion. It is a quality associated only with division and organization of labor.

Don’t you know there’s another bubble as well? An expectations bubble. Bigger houses, private planes, yachts… stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst...

[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most...

Thirty years ago [written 2009], over-regulation, over-taxation, mis-regulation, statism, state corporatism, and economic folly, cosiness and regulatory capture, and a crescent ideological enemy without, who were assisted by enemies – both fifth columnists and useful...

Honey, it isn’t democracy that runs this country. Capitalism rules. It does no good to reason with the capitalists or their politicians. This is a class war. We have to stir up the American people,...

Anger and fear are disabling trait behaviours, instilled in the opponent with care.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor,...

It turned out that capitalism alone could make people not only rich and happy but also poor, hungry, miserable, and powerless.

We give more economic aid to multinational corporations to increase their profits than we do to all the countries in the world combined.

Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at...

Considering what is at stake politically, economically and technically for most organizations; usually justifying IT governance deployment based on one viewpoint narrows suitability and expected benefits.

What’s good about growth? Why is it intrinsically good?

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries,...

By the fall of 1918, it was clear that a nation’s prosperity, even its very survival, depended on securing a safe, abundant supply of cheap oil.

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

In neo-classical economic theory, it is claimed without evidence that people are basically self-seeking, that they want above all the satisfaction of their material desires: what economists call “maximising utility”. The ultimate objective of mankind...

Unlike old-fashioned Britain, where Tony Blair recruited Lord Levy to encourage his ‘Friends of Israel’ to donate their money to a party that was just about to launch a criminal war, in America Alan Greenspan...

The young are right if they have little confidence in the ideas which rule most of their elders. But they are mistaken or misled when they believe that these are still the liberal ideas of...

It’s almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns ‘privately with the administration.’ That’s just a small sliver of...

The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic...

Our founding fathers did a decent job of framing our democracy. They wrote the Constitution and added a Bill of Rights that intended for people of all classes to enjoy the freedoms the Constitution offers....