53 Quotes About Market

The free market is a cornerstone of capitalism and an integral part of the American way of life. But the free market has its flaws. In this blog post, we’ve put together a collection of important market quotes from some of the most influential people in history to help you think about how markets work and how you can use them.

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The problems on campus life today are not about free speech. They are about how the students have absolutely nothing to do with their lives but sit and listen to lectures, find the best parties to attend, and otherwise discover first-world problems to stew about and protest. That's the root of the problem. This is not a commercial environment where people are incentivized to find value in each other. Campuses have become completely artificial 4-year holding tanks for infantilized kids with zero experience in actual life in which people find ways to get along. These students are not serving each other in a market exchange, and very few have worked at day in their lives, so their default is to find some offense and protest. It's all they've been taught to do and all they know how to do. Idle hands and parents' money = trouble. Jeffrey Tucker
Truth is the greatest marketing campaign.
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Truth is the greatest marketing campaign. Richie Norton
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In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy. In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers.. Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed? The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means. . Wendell Berry
Countries adopting free-market capitalism have increased output 70-fold, halved work...
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Countries adopting free-market capitalism have increased output 70-fold, halved work days and doubled lifespans. Stefan Molyneux
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My take on socialism is this: Socialism only seems to work when you don't fully implement it, when you keep enough capitalism around to pay socialism's bills, at least for a time. It's the difference between milking the cow and killing it. Socialism has no theory of wealth creation; it's just a destructive, envy-driven fantasy about redistributing it after something else (and somebody else) creates it first. Unknown
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Socialism is not really an option in the material world. There can be no collective ownership of anything materially scarce. One or another faction will assert control in the name of society. Inevitably, the faction will be the most powerful in society -- that is, the state. This is why all attempts to create socialism in scarce goods or services devolve into totalitarian systems of top-down planning. Jeffrey Tucker
Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges...
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Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. Murray N. Rothbard
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It's WW2 and there are wage controls in place. Instead of health care, companies decide to offer employees shoes. Having absorbed those costs, they later lobby for every company to be required to offer shoes. That calls forth regulation and monopolization of the shoe industry. Shoes are heavily subsidized. Every shoe must be approved. Producers must be domestic. They must adhere to a certain quality. They can't discriminate based on foot size or individual need. Prices rise, and some people lack shoes, so the Affordable Shoe Act forces everyone to buy into an official shoe plan or pay a fee. Here we have a perfect plan for making shoes egregiously expensive. The entire country would be consumed with the fear of being shoeless if they lose their job. The left wing calls for a single shoe provider to offer universal shoes and the right wing meekly suggests that shoe makers be permitted to sell across state lines. Meanwhile, libertarians suggest that we just forget the whole thing and let the market make and deliver shoes of every quality to anyone from anyone. Everyone screams that this is an insane and dangerous idea. Jeffrey Tucker
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Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo. Robert Higgs
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In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices. . Noam Chomsky
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Marketing without sales is dead. Richie Norton
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The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve. Donald Worster
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Go into the London Stock Exchange — a more respectable place than many a court — and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to heir church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy. . Voltaire
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Sell the results, not the nuts and bolts. Richie Norton
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When I was a child, I used to wonder why markets in my locality were all situated near the main roads. I grew up a little to get the answer; " that business minded people can meet there easily! " Your dream must be situated where they can meet people! Israelmore Ayivor
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As a child, I used to wonder why markets in my locality were all situated near the main roads. I grew up a little to get the answer; " that business minded people can meet there easily! " Your dream must be situated where they can meet people! Israelmore Ayivor
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Our market-intensive societies measure material progress by the increase in the volume and variety of commodities produced. And taking our cue from this sector, we measure social progress by the distribution of access to these commodities. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers. Ivan Illich
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The essential quality of a market system, contrary to popular thinking, is not that it promotes greed; but rather, that it renders greed harmless. Israel M. Kirzner
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Entrepreneurship is when an individual retrieves a red hot idea from the creativity furnace without the constraint of the heat of lean resources, and with each persistent blow of the innovation hammer shapes the still malleable idea against the anvil of passion, vision, insight, strategy, and principles to forge a fitting vessel of a creative concern. Amah Lambert
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Let's stop kidding ourselves that Greek debt is the Euro's key problem. With Greece gone, who's next ? Alex Morritt
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10/20/30 Rule in my book can level the playing field for a retail forex trader to trade alongside big banks and hedge funds. Ramesh Selvarajoo
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An average trader loses money, so in this profession, you need to be way above average to make consistent money trading the markets. Unknown
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In order to win as a contrarian, you need perfect timing and the perfect size. Unknown
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As a child, I used to wonder why markets in my locality were all situated near the main roads. I grew up a little to get the answer; “that business minded people can meet there easily! " Your dream must be situated where they can meet people! Israelmore Ayivor
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Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. Warren Buffett
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Dominate the market with your products of self-control; no matter how many temptations produced by the devil, you will still overcome with profits of excellence! Israelmore Ayivor
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It was the job of people like me to make up reasons, to spin a plausible yarn. And it’s amazing what people will believe. Heavy selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted. So if you didn’t know why the dollar was falling, you shouted out something about Arabs. Unknown
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A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. Robert Higgs
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Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force by the government, or with the sanction of the government. Monopoly exists insofar as the freedom of competition is violated, with the freedom of competition being understood as the absence of the initiation of physical force as the preventive of competition. Where there is no initiation of physical force to violate the freedom of competition, there is no monopoly. The freedom of competition is violated only insofar as individuals are excluded from markets or parts of markets by means of the initiation of physical force. Monopoly is thus a market or part of a market reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force. It is thus something imposed upon the market from without–by the government. (Private individuals–gangsters–can initiate force to reserve markets only if the government allows it and thereby sanctions it.) Thus, monopoly is not something which emerges from the normal operation of the economic system, and which the government must control. . George Reisman
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Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. Murray N. Rothbard
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The overwhelming tendency of markets is to bring people together, break down prejudices, persuade people of the need to cooperate regardless of class, race, religion, sex/gender, and physical ability. The same is obviously and especially true of sexual orientation. It is the market that rewards people who put aside their biases and seek gains through trade. This is why states devoted to racialist and hateful policies always resort to violence in control of the marketplace. . Jeffrey Tucker
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The myth of "free choice" begins with "free market" and "free trade". When five transnational corporations control the seed market, it is not a free market, it is a cartel. Vandana Shiva
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The earliest use of writing was strictly commercial and economic, not political or bureaucratic. It was trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property, not politics, "public education" or the creation of national mythology that allowed humankind to transition from prehistory to history. Just as trade, entrepreneurship, and stewardship of private property have always been on the forefront of civilization's advancement, so were they also the driving force behind civilization's emergence. Unknown
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Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion. Jeffrey Tucker
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Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything — not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing — the same way again. Unknown
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Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question. Jeffrey Tucker
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The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it. Harry Browne
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Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making. Jeffrey Tucker
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The valuations which result in determination of definite prices are different. Each party attaches a higher value to the good he receives than to that he gives away. The exchange ratio, the price, is not the product of equality of valuation, but on the contrary, the product of a discrepancy in valuation. Ludwig Von Mises
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A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives. Charles Wheelan
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In this way the world market is, with regard to its immanent dynamic, 'a space in which everyone has once been a productive labourer, and in which labour has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system'. Unknown
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[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. David Graeber
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The Industrial Revolution appears to be in its final stages and it will be remembered as a time where industrial stock markets were at historic highs at the same time that many natural processes were shutting down, including the next generation of humans. Steven Magee
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It is an economic fact that predicting the future is most valuable when everybody thinks you are wrong Derek Thompson
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Bad economics teaches that computers can design markets. Good economics teaches that markets can design computers. Unknown
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.. toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivated delusions in search of theoretical justification; fundamentalist tracts that acknowledged facts only when they could be accommodated to the demands of the lucrative faith. Despite their highly impressive labels and technical appearance, economic models were merely mathematized versions of the touching superstition that markets know best, both at times of tranquility and in periods of tumult. Yanis Varoufakis
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To discern profits only when it is within the ken of the market herd is not the acme of investing excellence Amah Lambert
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There are no good or bad stocks. The company is either good or bad. Stocks are just stocks. Kenneth L. Fisher
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I was convinced that I was totally incompetent in predicting market prices - but that others were generally incompetent also but did not know it, or did not know they were taking massive risks. Most traders were just "picking pennies in front of a steamroller, " exposing themselves to the high-impact rare event yet sleeping like babies, unaware of it. Nassem Nicholas Taleb
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No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily - or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play. Unknown
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The stock market is almost magical because it always leads the economy. It goes down long before the economy drops and then heads higher long before the economy rebounds. It always has. Kenneth L. Fisher
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It used to be said "Build it and they will come, " now it is "Build it and bribe them in". Bangambiki Habyarimana