Quotes about Economy

The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.

A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs.

You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission; don't even start asking for theirs.

We align ourselves not with the ever-expanding human monoculture, nor with the abstract vision of a global economy, but with the far more sustainable prospect of a regionally diverse and interdependent web of largely self-sufficient communities – a multiplicity of technologically sophisticated, vernacular cultures tuned to the structure and pulse of particular places. We know well that if humankind is to flourish without destroying the living world that sustains us, then we must grow out of our adolescent aspiration to encompass and control all that is. Sooner or later, we know, our technological ambition will begin to scale itself down, allowing itself to be oriented by the distinct needs of specific bioregions. Sooner or later, that is, technological civilization will accept the invitation of gravity and settle back into the land, its political and economic structures diversifying into the varied contours and rhythms of a more-than-human earth.

But when nothing is valued for what it is, everything is destined to be wasted. Once the values of things refer only to their future usefulness, then an infinite withdrawal of value from the living present has begun. Nothing (and nobody) can then exist that is not theoretically replaceable by something (or somebody) more valuable. The country that we (or some of us) had thought to make our home becomes instead 'a nation rich in natural resources'; the good bounty of the land begins its mechanical metamorphosis into junk, garbage, silt, poison, and other forms of 'waste.' "The inevitable result of such an economy is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime's devotion. 'Waste,' in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans--the unborn, the old, 'disinvested' farmers, the unemployed, the 'unemployable.' Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ashheap or the dump.

 

     Regarding the economic downturn in the U.S. our government played a part by establishing a tone of existing on credit and borrowing against our collective futures.  Our lending institutions played a part. Coming up with loan products like 40 year interest only loans so people could afford to get into houses that were overpriced to begin with. We did it to ourselves by over consuming and focusing on buying things to make us feel good about ourselves. 

    This recession / depression will be corrected over time but this is a good time for us all to re-examine our priorities and values. It's time to think about buying only what we can afford and to save money for a rainy day. Remember what I said about suffering...the suffering is repeated until the lesson is learned. President carter tried to teach America this lesson in the 1970's when he allowed credit card companies to raise interest rates to discourage people from living on credit. We didn't learn the lesson then. Will we learn it now?  

Over the years, the U.S. economy has shown a remarkable ability to absorb shocks of all kinds, to recover, and to continue to grow.

As Stewart Brand says, the main event of the emerging World Wide Web is its current absence of a business model in the midst of astounding abundance. The gift economy is one way players in the net rehearse for a life of following the free and anticipating the cheap. This is also a way for entirely new business models to shake out. Furthermore the protocommercial stage is a way for innovation to fast-forward into hyperdrive. Temporarily unhinged from the constraints of having to make a profit by next quarter, the greater network can explore a universe of never-before-tried ideas. Some ideas will even survive the transplantation to a working business.

Talk of generosity, of information that wants to be free, and of virtual communities is often dismissed by businesspeople as youthful new age idealism. It may be idealistic but it is also the only sane way to launch a commercial economy in the emerging space.

Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.

The human race will quickly learn to live sustainably once its greatest minds are no longer awestruck by egotistical ideologies and theologies that divide humanity, and no longer find themselves wasting valuable human and natural resources in the development, design, production, marketing and sales of worthles products.

What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups—or classes—of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.

When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

The highest risk for war is where various economic interests are able to control foreign policy to promote their particular interests rather than the well-being and liberty of the individuals within a society.

We should learn from the war and welfare century that the greatest discovery in Western civilization was that liberty could be achieved only through the proper and effective limitation on the power of the state. It is this limitation on the power of the state which protects private property, a free-market economy, personal liberties and promotes a noninterventionist foreing policy, which, if coupled with a strong national defense, will bring peace and prosperity instead of war and welfare. It is not democracy per se which protects freedom.

The healthy model of economy is about right living, and only through right living will human beings stop polluting their world and begin to show respect, gratitude and love to the planet that sustains them.

Women spend 80 cents of every dollar in the marketplace. We could be the most powerful force for economic and environmental change in the 21st century if we focused our money where it could make the biggest difference. If a million people did that, it would have a $1 billion impact.

Business, like art and science, has been revealed and conceived through the intellect and imagination of people, and it develops or declines because of the intellect and imagination of people.
In fact, there is no business; there are only people. Business exists only *among* people and *for* people.

Seems simple enough, and it applies to every aspect of business, but not enough businesspeople seem to get it.

Reading the economic forecasts and the indicators and the ratios and the rates for this or that, someone from another planet might actually believe that there really are invisible hands at work in the marketplace.

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

The sum total of each man's giving determines the standard of man's civilization.

The sum total of each man's giving determines the standard of man's civilization.

The very foundation of the living of life lies in the desire of every man to give service to fulfill the needs of his neighbor.

Equal interchange of goods and service between buyer and seller is the keynote of tomorrow’s business world when the vision of the modern business man awakens him to the wisdom of writing that policy into his code of ethics.

Globalization is a bottom-up phenomenon with all actions initiated by milions of individuals, the sum total of which is "globalization." No one is in charge, and no one can anticipate what the sum of all the individual initiatives will be before the result manifest. A global economy can only be the result of "spontaneous order."

...countries don't create economies. It is entrepreneurs and companies that create and revitalize economies. The role of the governments should be to create a nourishing environment for entrepreneurs and companies to flourish, not to get in the way of economic development.

The economic borderlines of our world will not be drawn between countries, but around Economic Domains. Along the twin paths of globalization and decentralization, the economic pieces of the future are being assembled in a new way. Not what is produced by a country or in a country will be of importance, but the production within global Economic Domains, measured as Gross Domain Products. The global market demands a global sharing of talent. The consequence is Mass Customization of Talent and education as the number one economic priority for all countries

Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under socialism, the reverse is true.

Every step by which an individual substitutes concerted action for isolated action results in an immediate and recognizable improvement in his conditions. The advantages derived from peaceful cooperation and division of labor are universal.