Ian Watson Quotes

Value is what people are willing to pay for it.

I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.

In a free market capitalist system, 'price signals' are everything. Prices are determined by buyers and sellers in the free market, and these prices are broadcast from the exchanges, reaching all corners of the economy - where they are used to transact business.

Tell me, what do they do for us in Bulgaria? Do they fix the prices? Or is there some kind of a free market?

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

When I entered the market, I was rejected because the elite say that you have to sell things at a certain price point. My position was that the consumer is smarter than that. Who cares if it's $200, not $2,000?

A common price isn't the lowest price. It will most obviously be the highest price.

Prices have stayed up because people in control of supply decided they could keep them up.

Competition is good for consumers. It provides more choices at better prices.

Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

I believe in the principle that if you have more competition, it will drive down the prices.

In well-functioning markets, price equals opportunity cost. Meaning that the proper way to price out and charge us for things is to charge us what those resources could otherwise have produced. This is a lesson the Soviet Union never learned at all, and the rest is history.

When the price of a drug rises, it becomes profitable and the target of new competition.

Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.

You'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!' It's all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching, and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they're worth nothing.

To economists, prices serve as crucial signals to producers and consumers. In a regulated market, the state sets prices high enough for private companies to cover their costs and earn a guaranteed profit for their investors. But in a deregulated market, prices should vary with demand and supply.

Competition is the final price determinant and competitive prices may result in profits which force you to accept a rate of return less than you hoped for, or for that matter to accept temporary losses.

You'll have lower prices under deregulation than you will through regulation.

With competition, prices tend to be uniform; with monopoly, prices are uniformly high.

Let the king fix the rates for the purchase and sale of all marketable goods, having duly considered whence they come, whither they go, how long they have been kept, the probable profit and the probable outlay. Once in five nights, or at the close of each fortnight, let the king publicly settle the prices for the merchants.

Free prices are the price of freedom.

The consumer knows that his prices are made for him by those who control the avenues of trade and the highways of commerce.

A man may not sell above the current price, i.e., such a price as is usual in the time and place, and as another (who knows the worth of the commodity) would give for it When a man loseth in his commodity for want of skill, etc., he must look at it as his own fault or cross, and therefore must not lay it upon another

What is price gouging and what is capitalism can sometimes be a fine line.

… in May, 1917, wheat was selling in Chicago at $3.25 a bushel and the consumer was paying for his bread on that basis, although the official estimate of the Department of Agriculture of the average price actually received by the farmer for his crop was but $1.44 a bushel.