For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny.
Early in the Obama administration, our economic team faced intense pressure to go down the road of coercive capitalism.
The part of capitalism that doesn’t work for me is when capitalists make decisions in the way that Adam Smith suggested, which is that as long as you do everything in the interest of the investor, you’re going to actually make the best decisions for all other stakeholders. I don’t happen to agree with that.
There’s nothing wrong with paying taxes; they should be paid in proportion to how rich you are. This idea that you’re going to get better growth by cutting taxes at the top has no historical justification. And it’s certainly not an argument in favor of capitalism.
It’s the aspirations that capitalism is promoting as beautiful, positive attributes that are dangerous. All that is in the bedrooms of the poor and in the villages of the Third World, and it’s like a cruel carrot that’s being waved in front of people’s noses. It’s a seduction, an unattainable dream.
In the coming years, if not sooner, social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility – and, I suggest, move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.
I have said it already, I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell.
It was only with the rise of capitalism and the need for workers to be freer, more mobile, and prosperous, that societies were able to undermine pagan morality and the ancient institution of slavery.
There is going to be globalization, but we need to do it under terms – under rules that work as rules work for our domestic economy on the dynamic of capitalism. You need to do trade in the same way.
Free-enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived. It is one of the most compelling ideas we humans have ever had. But we can aspire to something even greater.
Big companies are reliant on institutional investors on a punishing schedule which leads to ruthless behaviour. This form of capitalism with this structure and incentives will never deliver sustainability.
The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing.
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.
We’re still expecting capitalism to solve problems: ‘Maybe if we sell enough oil, we can give some profits to an environmental agency!’ Capitalism isn’t a moral system.
The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.
Capitalism is a system for determining objective value.
The theme my generation explored was the relationship between capitalism and art.
I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.
What Trump represents is a restoration – a restoration of true American capitalism.
Capitalism may have all sorts of things that are good, but ultimately, it’s bad for everyone.
What I know is that we no longer have free enterprise capitalism in health care; it’s not a system any longer where people are able to innovate. It’s not based on voluntary exchange. The government is directing it.
I believe our philosophy of conscious capitalism will eventually be widely adopted primarily because it is a better way to do business, and it creates more total value in the world for all of its stakeholders.
Traditional Marxism attempted to argue against free enterprise by saying that capitalism causes poverty and that, therefore, socialism is necessary. That didn’t work, because it was false.
Poland in the 1990s saw a surge of unrestrained, American-style capitalism. With millions of Poles living in the U.S.A., the defeat of communism led many to aim for a lifestyle derivative of Chicago or Detroit.
Free enterprise capitalism has been the most powerful creative system of social cooperation and human progress ever conceived, but its perception and its role in society have been distorted.
I think the growing disregard for the environment, culture, and heritage is a natural consequence of capitalism.
Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend.
Crucially, Marxist atheism is only achieved once the theological critique of capitalism is completed. This is what separates Marxist atheism from the gliberal platitudes of the likes of Nick Cohen, who proclaim secularism while remaining attached to the theology of capital (liberal commonsense).
Marx and Lenin were ahead of their time. Marx wrote before offshoring of jobs and the financialization of the economy. Lenin presided over a communist revolution that jumped the gun by taking place in a country in which feudal elements still predominated over capitalism.
Capitalism and political systems – like companies – must constantly evolve to stay vital.
The post-crisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it.
Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other.
My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with – bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons – when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave – it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box.
I think anytime that you go to the extreme of any mode of economics, be it capitalism or communism, you have these feedback mechanisms that make the system turn in on itself.
The E.U.’s tax and regulatory policies, climate-change and welfare spending, and free immigration even in wartime are gradually ruining Europe. That’s why I believe Brexit is good for British freedom, political autonomy, and the survival of democratic capitalism.
I was thinking what happens if I break my leg today? What can I do to prevent me going back to the place of being poor? It led me to the world of venture capitalism. How are they making money? I decided I’m going to learn as much as I can.
I love the theatre and Miller is one of my all-time favourite playwrights. ‘All My Sons’ is a very socialist play, which exposes the lack of empathy that can accompany capitalism when it is left unchecked.
There are no two countries with the same style of economic mechanism, with the same capitalism.
I think hard-core capitalism tends to commercialize everything.
Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.
The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I.
Trump is literally the epitome of evil, all the evils of this country – be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism.
If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you’ll have zero capitalism, zero competition – it would just be one giant company.
Somewhere along the way to free-market capitalism, the United States became the most wasteful society on the planet.
The bunker business is just one instantiation, the grandest instantiation, of what you might think of as conspiracy capitalism.
The American people have a right to know on the rare occasions in which their money is used to invest in private operations, if you will, take bets on capitalism, that is very well vetted, very well thought out and without political interference.
What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation.
To put it bluntly, there isn’t one economic theory that can single-handedly explain Singapore’s success; its economy combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial; reality is complex.
