Category: Thought

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.

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.

Benedetto Croce was an Italian philosopher and outspoken anti-fascist.

In decadent societies the guilty aren’t punished; only the unpopular are punished.

Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News (April 18, 2019).

Protectionism is nothing if not socialistic. It proposes, in the public interest, to modify the natural course of trade and production, and to do this by depriving the citizen of his privilege of buying in the cheapest market. Yet the protectionist is not to be called, therefore, a Socialist, since the Socialist would not only have the state determine what shall be produced, but he would have the state itself undertake the production.

Francis Amasa Walker (Davis R. Dewey, ed.), Discussions of Economics and Statistics, Volume II (1899), p. 260.

It is said that when railways were first opened in Spain, peasants standing on the tracks were not unfrequently run over; and that the blame fell on the engine-drivers for not stopping: rural experiences having yielded no conception of the momentum of a large mass moving at a high velocity.

The incident is recalled to me on contemplating the ideas of the so-called “practical” politician, into whose mind there enters no thought of such a thing as political momentum, still less of a political momentum which, instead of diminishing or remaining constant, increases. The theory on which he daily proceeds is that the change caused by his measure will stop where he intends it to stop. He contemplates intently the things his act will achieve, but thinks little of the remoter issues of the movement his act sets up, and still less its collateral issues.

Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State (1884).

Nature has provided, by means as simple as they are infallible, that there should be dispersion, diffusion, coordination, simultaneous progress, all constituting a state of things that your restrictive laws paralyze as much as they can; for the tendency of such laws is, by isolating communities, to render the diversity of condition much more marked, to prevent equalization, hinder integration, neutralize countervailing circumstances, and segregate nations, whether in their superiority or in their inferiority of condition.

Frédéric Bastiat, from Economic Sophisms, “To Equalize the Conditions of Production” — the “such laws” mentioned are protectionist measures, and protectionism was the chief target of Bastiat’s famous book.