Whoever is fortunate enough to be an American citizen came into the greatest inheritance man has ever enjoyed. He has had the benefit of every heroic and intellectual effort men have made for many thousands of years, realized at last. If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (1943), p. 292.
In every country of the world, economic self-rule by the people is frustrated to some extent by state intervention to protect sectional interests. By ‘economic self-rule by the people,’ I simply mean the demo-cratic exercise of consumers’ sovereignty. Under a free market system, income receivers as a whole control the economy through the discipline they exercise over decision-makers, through buying or refraining from buying the services and commodities offered in the market. The present is a restrictionist, not an equalitarian or liberal age; and I know of no country in which the state forbids all creation of scarcity, that is, all action for the benefit of at least some politically powerful sections.
William H. Hutt (left, above), The Economics of the Colour Bar (1964), p. 176-7.
The increasingly close governmental control of social and economic life in recent years has tended to strengthen separatism by enhancing the prizes of political power and thus the intensity of the struggle for it, and for this reason it has accentuated concern with ethnic differences between the rulers and the ruled. . . .
Peter T. Bauer, United States Aid and Indian Development, p. 7.
The virtues of the free market do not depend upon the virtues of the men at the political top but on the dispersed powers of substitution exercised by men in their role as consumers. In that role, a truly competitive market enables them to exert the energy which enforces the neutrality of business decision-making in respect of race, colour, creed, sex, class, accent, school, or income group
William H. Hutt (left, above), The Economics of the Colour Bar (1964), p. 174-5.
Where there are no rights, there are no duties.
When we buy a product in the free market, we do not ask: What was the colour of the person who made it? Nor do we ask about the sex, race, nationality, religion or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money. Hence it is in the interest of business men (who must try to produce at least cost in anticipation of demand) not only to seek out and employ the least privileged classes (excluded by custom or legislation from more remunerative employments) but actually to educate them for these opportunities by investing in them.
William H. Hutt (left, above), The Economics of the Colour Bar (1964), p. 173.
Capital does not ‘beget profit’ as Marx thought. The capital goods as such are dead things that in themselves do not accomplish anything. If they are utilized according to a good idea, profit results. If they are utilized according to a mistaken idea, no profit or losses result. It is the entrepreneurial decision that creates either profit or loss. It is mental acts, the mind of the entrepreneur, from which profits ultimately originate. Profit is a product of the mind, of success in anticipating the future state of the market. It is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.
Ludwig von Mises, “Profit and Loss” (presented at the Mont Pèlerin Society, Beauvallon, France, September 1951)
On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola changed its formula in its newly released New Coke. The American response was overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula was back on the market in less than three months. A great demonstration of consumer sovereignty.
Benedetto Croce was an Italian philosopher and outspoken anti-fascist.
Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human. . . . No people will be truly free till all are free.
In decadent societies the guilty aren’t punished; only the unpopular are punished.
Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News (April 18, 2019).