A Quote by Ludwig von Mises

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.
Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied... He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.
We think of prices as simply the notation of how much we must pay for things. But the price system accomplishes far more than that. Hundreds of millions of people buying and selling, and abstaining from buying and selling, generate a system of signals - prices to producers and consumers about relative scarcities and demand. Through this system, consumers can convey to producers their subjective priorities and entrepreneurs can invest accordingly.
The only source from which an entrepreneurs profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.
The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.
Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches.
Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come.
Too many companies these days can't tell the difference between good profits and bad.... By now you're probably wondering how in heaven's name profit, that holy grail of the business enterprise, can ever be bad. Short of outright fraud, isn't one dollar of earnings as good as another? Certainly, accountants can't tell the difference between good and bad profits. They all look the same on an income statement. While bad profits don't show up on the books, they are easy to recognize. They're profits earned at the expense of customer relationships.
All people, entrepreneurs as well as non-entrepreneurs, look askance upon any profits earned by other people. Envy is a common weakness of men. People are loath to acknowledge the fact that they themselves could have earned profits if they had displayed the same foresight and judgment the successful businessman did.
If consumers are asked to make greater sacrifices than industry, this country is going to have its greatest shortage of all -- a shortage of consumers.
Media companies' hit-focused marketing did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflects how consumers make choices. The truth is that consumers prefer blockbusters.
Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.
When consumers know things, they tend to make informed choices, and that could affect corporate profits. I'm sorry, but your right to know is always going to be outweighed by their right to hide it from you.
Books are special, books are the way we talk to generations that have not turned up yet. The fact that we can actually, essentially communicate with the people in ancient Egypt, people in Rome and Greece, people in ancient Britain, people in New York in the 1920s who can communicate to us and change the way we think, and change the things that we believe. I think that books are special. Books are sacred. And I think that when you are selling books, you have to remember that in all the profits and loss, in all of that, you are treading on sacred ground.
Consumers get used to reading and understanding their credit card contracts, their mortgages, their check overdraft agreements, those are good things. That puts power back in the hands of consumers.
...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end... Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more.
Why was the blind guy playing with matches, you ask? Because he's good at it. Anything to do with fire, igniting things, exploding things, things with fuses, wicks, accelerants . . . Iggy's your man. It's one of those good/bad things.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!