"There is ample evidence that the global economy has actually brought prosperity to many different areas of the world. (...) What is needed is not a rejection of the positive role of the market mechanism in generating income and wealth, but the important recognition that the market mechanism has to work in a world of many institutions. We need the power and protection of these institutions, provided by democratic practice, civil and human rights, free and open media, facilities for basic education and health care, economic safety nets and, of course, provisions for women's freedom and rights."
- Amartya Sen, "freedom's market"
"Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.
- Adam Smith, 1776, The Wealth of Nation, Book IV
"If economics is not to be a science of society, what will be its ultimate social utility? My answer is that its purpose is to help us better understand the capitalist framework in which we are likely to have to shape our collective destiny over time." foreseeable future. Having supported for many years the ideas and goals of democratic socialism, this is not an easy statement for me to make, but given the experience of socialism in the forms it has taken in the 20th century, it is difficult expect from him a benign revival in the next century"
- Heilbroner, R. Earthly Philosophers, p. 471
"Retaking the thread, it is necessary to add a final series of properties to the characteristics of the market system. [... in the market, the individual] knows how little there is to know. That little is enough for him, because it is the market the one that unravels the information for him. Market competition, as Hayek emphasizes, is in itself a discovery procedure and also ends up being an enormous simplifyer of information. The market not only produces information in the form of extraordinarily simplified signals, but also it also authenticates (or denies) that information through the same feedback processes that produce it [...] Organized orders, in order to function, impose high costs of information and also of knowledge. In contrast, the market order does not it requires to be understood (it does not imply high costs of knowledge) and it minimizes the costs of information. The market is not only an invisible hand; it is also an invisible mind"
Giovanni Sartori, What is democracy, p. 260
“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity”