Monday, March 9, 2009

Fredrich August von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman

"Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind."
-- Fredrich August von Hayek
(1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Fredrich.August.von.Hayek.Quote.DD54

"The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer. ...[Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities."
-- Ludwig von Mises
(1881-1973) Economist and social philosopher
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Ludwig.von.Mises.Quote.A41D


"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. ... Roosevelt's policies were very destructive. Roosevelt's policies made the depression longer and worse than it otherwise would have been."
-- Milton Friedman
(1912-2006) Nobel Prize-winning economist, economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, "ultimate guru of the free-market system"
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Milton.Friedman.Quote.0AB6

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