Albert Fink Quotes

The only way you can stop the unregulated monopoly ... from gouging ... is to introduce competition.

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

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

I am just as anxious as Mr. Brandeis can be, to have trade regulated by competition as far as possible; but as a matter of fact, competition has broken down hopelessly in this country to adequately control prices, to adequately control quality, and we all know it… it is the theory regarding competition that it will regulate prices and quality; that it will give us reasonable prices and superior quality. That is a beautiful theory. But if this theory has ever corresponded to the facts in the past (and this I doubt) we may be sure that in the future it will never again do so.

I do not believe in government ownership of anything which can with propriety be left in private hands, and in particular I should most strenuously object to government ownership of railroads. In my judgment public ownership of railroads is highly undesirable and would probably in this country entail far-reaching disaster.

Free competition and the open market system as they were known in the old days, have lost their places in the system, and that the only substitute for them, in these modern times, is government regulation and control.

There must be reasonable restrictions upon competition else we shall see competition destroyed.

[The excessive] evils associated with [unregulated] competition [came about] through the shameful neglect of government to fulfill its primary function of protecting equal rights and enforcing justice.]

The breakup was a good thing. It brought competition into a field where there hadn’t been any competition and that’s the American way. Competition brings down price and brings up quality.

I am firmly opposed to the Government entering any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens.

The people were told in the last campaign that trusts [corporate monopolies] were a natural evolution, and that the only way to deal with them was to regulate them. The people are tired of being told such things. What they want is the kind of opportunity that formerly existed in this country.

Only God can fix prices.

The best way for you to keep Government out of your business is to promote competition.

Corporate executives are not all that conservative….They are not interested in the social issues and the big boys and girls are not interested in fighting regulation because that’s what keeps the little boys and girls from becoming big boys and girls.

Nobody, in any part of the world, has figured out a way to make money on passenger railroads. It's a matter of social policy.

The Government must get out of the "protective" business and the "subsidy" business and the "improvement" and the "development" business. It must let trade, and commerce, and manufactures, and steamboats, and railroads and telegraphs alone. It cannot touch them without breeding corruption.

The best thing that governments can do is get out of business. When governments interfere less, managers can do their jobs better.

The best industrial policy is competition.

Most companies in a capitalistic system compete mightily to obtain monopolistic positions so they can avoid capitalistic competition thereafter. Whenever a business person must compete for price, he tends to describe that derisively as a “commodity business” and tries to remedy the situation.

Neither this people or any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also to be used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole…. [We must] keep the great highways of commerce open to all on reasonable and equitable terms.

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.

Free enterprise is a rough and competitive game. It is a hell of a lot better than a government monopoly.

Competition, or the unimpeded pressure of individual on individual, has been from the beginning a great force in societies ; but of old it was hindered and controlled by custom ; in the future, like the other great physical forces of society, it will be controlled by morality.

Markets, when left to themselves, can sort of slip into being just the private property of big businesses and cartels, meeting the needs of some businesses and not the needs of customers.

Sometimes, for businesses, competition can be inconvenient, because competition means that the race is never over, the game is never won. No matter how well you were doing in the past, there's always someone who are out there wanting to take your place. So the temptation to avoid competition is powerful. It's rooted in motives as old as Adam and Eve: in greed for yet more money, in fear of losing your position in the market and all the benefits it brings.