Robert Shea Quotes

One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, everything-will-turn-out-okay-in-the-end philosophy of economics in order to justify their own evil works. And the economists, for the most part, have sucked up to that money.

My business is hurting people.

Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.

In a state of poverty, illiteracy, people just remain exposed to all kinds of manipulation. That's what we have lived. It's easier to tell a poor person, 'You know what, you are poor, you're hungry because the other one has taken away your rights.'

The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point. Poor people do not shut down factories... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits.

I do have a problem with developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerable communities for profit. That it continues is a shame upon us all, because we are all responsible for the future that we create.

It's an awful thing to be aware of your own corruption. I think a lot of people are bound by the particular economic system we work in to serve companies and masters who aren't really telling people what they're doing.

Sometimes I'd say what's bad for the country is good for my business, unfortunately.

The cancer that demands our urgent attention is corruption and poverty.

We know an organised workforce cannot be enslaved, but when governments fail their citizens and allow corporations to escape the rule of law, slavery can flourish.

Scratch any fortune and you'll find blood only a generation or two back...child labor in mines or mills...Slavery. Drugs. Stock swindles. Wasting nature with clear-cuts, pollution, harvesting to extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every fortune comes out of something unpleasant.

Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

I have never been able to procure sufficient slaves to cultivate my lands and that of any guilt that attached to this trade we [planters] were at most but partners with the Parliament which tolerated it, and the country which profited so much from it.

The insurance companies use their economic power to grind down working people..

There have been, and are this day, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, colored men who are in league with tyrants and who receive a great portion of their daily bread of the moneys which they acquire from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously deliver into the hands of our natural enemies

I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.

Poor people are too stupid to know they're just chess pieces in a game.

As long as inequality and other social problems plague us, populists will try to exploit them.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

We have to put an end to the culture of selfishness and corruption that allows greedy Wall Street banks and executives to rip off working people without any consequences.

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

What I think was a really lucky coincidence was that a lot of the themes of 'Okja' are things I write about a lot: cognitive dissonance and corporate greed and also the internal politics of fringe groups.

It's not a long-term business model to take advantage of your consumers in ways that are not sustainable.

Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good.

Democracy is becoming collateral damage in a world where global risks have been ignored or exacerbated by those with the power to act.