A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
LUDWIG VON MISESEconomic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.
More Ludwig von Mises Quotes
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As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny are at stake.
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It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted.
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Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.
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The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples want satisfaction.
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The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom.
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This is what capitalism, the much abused profit system, has brought about and brings about daily anew. Yet, most present-day governments and political parties are eager to destroy this system.
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Free markets. What does this system mean? The answer is simple: it is the market economy, it is the system in which the cooperation of individuals in the social division of labor is achieved by the market.
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Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
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Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions.
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Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen.
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Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
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Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism .
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Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.
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Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
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Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.
LUDWIG VON MISES