quotations about capitalism
When I say that I mean to defend capitalism, what I have in mind is the capitalistic freedom to proceed by trial and error, without having to ask rulers and border officials for permission first. That is the liberty that I once thought anarchy would bring, but under the control of laws ensuring that one person's freedom will not encroach on other people's. I want everyone to have that liberty in abundance. If the critics of capitalism feel that we already have a superabundance of that liberty today, I would like to have more still--a superduper abundance if possible--especially for the poor of the world's population, who as things now stand have little say regarding their work and consumption.
JOHAN NORBERG
In Defense of Global Capitalism
The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph is its hour of crisis. The fall of the Berlin Wall ended more than a century of political competition between capitalism and communism. Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way to rationally organize a modern economy. At this moment in history, no responsible nation has a choice. As a result, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Third World and former communist nations have balanced their budgets, cut subsidies, welcomed foreign investment, and dropped their tariff barriers. Their efforts have been repaid with bitter disappointment.
HERNANDO DE SOTO
The Mystery of Capital
Advanced capitalism has transcended itself. Not to overstate things, financial dealings have practically become a religious activity. The new mysticism. People worship capital, adore its aura, genuflect before Porsches and Tokyo land values. Worshiping everything their shiny Porsches symbolize. It's the only stuff of myth that's left in the world.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance
Landlord system, life for rent
capitalism doesn't make any sense
don't join the system, it's suicide!
coincidence or consequence: you decide!
THE UNSEEN
"Coincidence or Consequence?"
Capitalism has invaded physical as well as virtual space.... It has confiscated and hidden wealth like never before, it has taken it out of reach of people by hiding it in the form of symbols. Symbols have become the subjects of abstract exchanges that take place nowhere else than in their virtual world.
VIVIANE FORRESTER
L'Horreur Économique
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER
Capitalism
Baby don't come back no more
Distasteful ugly and cheap
This is how you make me feel
Capitalism stole my virginity
THE (INTERNATIONAL) NOISE CONSPIRACY
"Capitalism Stole My Virginity"
Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Virgin Suicides
Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable.
LUDWIG VON MISES
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
Capitalism and the wage system must be abolished; they are twin monsters which are eating up the life of the world. In place of them we need a system which will hold in cheek men's predatory impulses, and will diminish the economic injustice that allows some to be rich in idleness while others are poor in spite of unremitting labor.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Capitalism and the Wage System", Political Ideals
It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. The impact of mass capitalism is now universal.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Post-American World
It should be everyone's right in a capitalist system to have some way to take advantage of compound interest.
KATY LEDERER
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Capitalist", Gelf Magazin, January 19, 2009
If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.
TALCOTT PARSONS
foreward, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Capitalism is of this material world; it provides us with the means to live; it empowers us within the known world of sense and human reason. If it is to be measured by a strict standard of holiness, by religious normativity alone, then there can never be a moral capitalism.
STEPHEN YOUNG
Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good
The growth of world prosperity is not a "miracle" or any of the other mystifying terms we customarily apply to countries that have succeeded economically and socially. Schools are not built, nor are incomes generated, by sheer luck, like a bolt from the blue. These things happen when people begin to think along new lines and work hard to bring their ideas to fruition. But people do that everywhere, and there is no reason why certain people in certain places during certain periods in history should be intrinsically smarter or more capable than others. What makes the difference is whether the environment permits and encourages ideas and work, or instead puts obstacles in their way. That depends on whether people are free to explore their way ahead, to own property, to invest for the long term, to conclude private agreements, and to trade with others. In short, it depends on whether or not the countries have capitalism.
JOHAN NORBERG
In Defense of Global Capitalism
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
MILTON FRIEDMAN
Capitalism and Freedom
Capitalism continually renews and reinvents itself. This helps us to understand the fact that despite its severe internal contradictions, contradictions that Marx anticipated would bring about the ultimate collapse of capitalism, the capitalist system has managed to remain vibrant over the centuries.
VICTOR D. LIPPIT
Capitalism
Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating prosperity.
JOHAN NORBERG
In Defense of Global Capitalism
Ignorance, as well as disapproval for the natural restraints placed on market excesses that capitalism and sound markets impose, cause our present leaders to reject capitalism and blame it for all the problems we face. If this fallacy is not corrected and capitalism is even further undermined, the prosperity that the free market generates will be destroyed.
RON PAUL
speech, Jul. 9, 2002
To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names -- Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.
RON PAUL
speech, Jul. 9, 2002