Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
The attributes of God have been carefully explored. But the Devil's attributes have been left vague. I think I've found one of them. It is he who puts the prices on things." "Doesn't God put a price on things?" "No. One of his attributes is magnanimity. But the Devil is a setter of prices, and a usurer, as well. You buy from him at an agreed price, but the payments are all on time, and the interest is charged on the whole of the principal, right up to the last payment, however much of the principal you think you have paid off in the meantime.
That’s not the way to create wealth The way to create wealth is to be fair to everybody.
tax cuts for the wealthy.
Imagine how differently American business would function were our faith in the power of goodness to replace our faith in the power of money. Huge industries would no longer make billions of dollars on activities that diminish the well-being and safety of our children, our health, and our environment, on the pretext that it's "just business." To put money before goodness is idolatry, and the laws of the universe ensure that in the end all idols will fall.
To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter, could function on its own; rather, ethics is an interior principle of the economy itself, which cannot function if it does not take account of the human values of solidarity and reciprocal responsibility.
The change began with John Stuart Mill and the Utopians . When Mill pointed out that economics had no ultimate solution to the problem of distribution , that society might do with the fruits of its toil as it saw fit, he introduced into the mechanical calculus of the market a conflicting calculus of moral judgment.
Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues.
Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.
Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not do without that life.
I believe in conscientious capitalism; that's a kind of driving force with me.
Where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners.
We need to build an India that is an economic leader as well as a moral exemplar. For us, those two touchstones can never be separate. They are and must forever be linked.
To a thrifty theologian, bent on redemption with economy, there are few points of ethics too fine-spun for splitting.
Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.
Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.
There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.
Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question, for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society.
I'm tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century, we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code.
The idea that debt is necessary for trade, and has to be forgiven, is consequent to the rise of a market economy. The idea that debt is wrong and should be punished is a feature of a moral economy.
