12 quotes
When the law interferes with people's pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around.
Free to Choose (1980)
The price system transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.
Free to Choose (1980)
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
Free to Choose (1980)
Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation.
Free to Choose (1980)
Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Free to Choose (1980)
Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before.
Free to Choose (1980)
The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest.
Free to Choose (1980)
When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
Free to Choose (1980)
The price system works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. We never realize how well it functions until it is prevented from functioning, and even then we seldom recognize the source of the trouble.
Free to Choose (1980)
The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Free to Choose (1980)
A worker is protected from his employer by the existence of other employers for who he can go to work. An employer is protected from exploitation by his employees by the existence of other workers whom he can hire. The consumer is protected from exploitation by a given seller by the existence of other sellers from whom he can buy.
Free to Choose (1980)
Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity: first, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued pur poses; third, they determine who gets how much of the product—the distribution of income. These three functions are closely in terrelated.
Free to Choose (1980)