In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by their
buying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, of
what quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners who
fail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yet
satisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit their
preferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busy
fructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production of
ever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientific
theories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is,
the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims and
fancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is mass
production to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makes
enterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy.
He is the customer “who is always right.
These people look upon inequality as upon an evil. They do not assert that a definite
degree of inequality which can be exactly determined by a judgment free of any
arbitrariness and personal evaluation is good and has to be preserved unconditionally.
They, on the contrary, declare inequality in itself as bad and merely contend that a
lower degree of it is a lesser evil than a higher degree in the same sense in which a
smaller quantity of poison in a man’s body is a lesser evil than a larger dose. But if
this is so, then there is logically in their doctrine no point at which the endeavors
toward equalization would have to stop. Whether one has already reached a degree of
inequality which is to be considered low enough and beyond which it is not necessary
to embark upon further measures toward equalization is just a matter of personal
judgments of value, quite arbitrary, different with different people and changing in the
passing of time. As these champions of equalization appraise confiscation and
“redistribution” as a policy harming only a minority, viz., those whom they consider
to be “too” rich, and benefiting the rest—the majority—of the people, they cannot
oppose any tenable argument to those who are asking for more of this allegedly
beneficial policy. As long as any degree of inequality is left, there will always be
people whom envy impels to press for a continuation of the equalization policy.
Nothing can be advanced against their inference: If inequality of wealth and incomes
is an evil, there is no reason to acquiesce in any degree of it, however low;
equalization must not stop before it has completely leveled all individuals’ wealth and
incomes.
The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound
economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of
this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans
whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able to
advance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do they
insult them.
It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment... But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions...More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature.
Ludwig von MisesThe masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.
Ludwig von MisesIt is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.
Ludwig von MisesThe alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.
Ludwig von MisesAll people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out
Ludwig von MisesOnly stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Ludwig von MisesTags: writing
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization
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