A Quote by David Ricardo
There can be no greater error then in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption.
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I shall argue that it is the capital stock from which we derive satisfaction, not from the additions to it (production) or the subtractions from it (consumption): that consumption, far from being a desideratum, is a deplorable property of the capital stock which necessitates the equally deplorable activity of production: and that the objective of economic policy should not be to maximize consumption or production, but rather to minimize it, i.e. to enable us to maintain our capital stock with as little consumption or production as possible.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.
Capital is not a free gift of God or of nature. It is the outcome of a provident restriction of consumption on the part of man. It is created and increased by saving and maintained by the abstention from dissaving.
The greatly increased consumption of alcoholic beverages is very largely a direct result of the increased purchasing power created by wartime expenditures.
If I am right in supposing it to be comparatively easy to make capital-goods so abundant that the marginal efficiency of capital is zero, this may be the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism.
If the process of life is about moving toward increased complexity and organization, a sort of sublime unfolding of greater and greater self-organizing systems, then we're actually doing pretty well.
Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?
Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.
In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
If, for example, each of us had the same share of capital in the national total capital, then if the share of capital goes up it's not a problem, because you get as much as I do. The problem is that capital in capitalist countries is very heavily concentrated, especially financial capital. So then if the share of income from that source goes up, that actually exacerbates inequality.
If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.
There exists a black kingdom which the eyes of man avoid because its landscape fails signally to flatter them. This darkness, which he imagines he can dispense with in describing the light, is error with its unknown characteristics. Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.
If it is mind that we are searching the brain, then we are supposing the brain to be much more than a telephone-exchange. We are supposing it to be a telephone-exchange along with subscribers as well.
We must beware of falling into the fatally common error of supposing that what we see is all there is to see.
When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.
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