A Quote by Karl Hess

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

Karl Hess

Quote Topics

Accept Anarchy Barter Basis Capitalism Cash Charity Communal Credit Division Division Of Labor Economic Economically Enterprises Ethic Except Exchange Felt Form Goods Goods And Services Labor Libertarian Men Need Notion Regulation Same Services Should Simply Solely Straight System Tokens Value Versions Voluntarily Voluntary Which Widely Without Would Would Be

Quote Author

Karl Hess
American - Writer
May 25, 1923 - April 22, 1994

Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism - with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church.

Ayn Rand

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose.

Russell Kirk

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.

Ayn Rand

Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith.

Francois Quesnay

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit.

Rose Wilder Lane

Unrestricted laissez faire capitalism allocates resources in a most efficient way to satisfy human wants without regard to the rationality or morality of those desires.

Jerry Pournelle

There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state.

Karl Polanyi

Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.

Ludwig von Mises

I do think in general, women have a value system. And it's that value system that I think is feminism. Not "men are bad, women are good, let's get women empowered" - it's let's get this value system, which is about the capacity to feel and empathize with life, and therefore to protect it.

Elizabeth Lesser

I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value.

Paul Dirac

I've got some repenting to do. I doubt, however, that those who have wedded Christianity with laissez-faire capitalism will see things this way. I can just hear them saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Tony Campolo

Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -- and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State.

Ayn Rand

An ethic is not an ethic, and a value not a value without somesacrifice for it. Something given up, something not gained.

St. Jerome

Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

Ayn Rand

Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur for an ever expanding democratic way of life.