Ludwig von Mises Quotes

The market system makes all producers responsible to the consumer.

The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into "big business" was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses.

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.

Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race.

The sharper the competition, the better it serves its social function to improve economic production.

I promise you that there are a lot of people involved in various kinds of retail activities who think they have a crucial role in the economy, and they're right.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

I think one purpose is very clear among corporations and business leaders: make profits, deliver high return for stockholders, conquer markets, service consumers and create jobs. But in today's world, demands from corporations and leaders are much more than that. We need to understand what people really want at the very end.

Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.

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

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

It doesn't really matter who owns things so long there is enough competition, which means lower pricing, better quality goods, more variety, and an economy where the consumers are the big winners.

My worldview says that competition is the consumer's best friend.

The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.

The enterprise can fulfill its human and social functions only if it prospers as a business.

The consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers.

Competition is the most promising means to achieve and secure prosperity. It alone enables people in their role of consumer to gain from economic progress. It ensures that all advantages which result from higher productivity may eventually be enjoyed.

The great virtue of free enterprise is that it forces existing businesses to meet the test of the market continuously, to produce products that meet consumer demands at lowest cost, or else be driven from the market. It is a profit-and-loss system. Naturally, existing businesses generally prefer to keep out competitors in other ways. That is why the business community, despite its rhetoric, has so often been a major enemy of truly free enterprise.

The question is how do you do it [more consumer protection] so that it actually works that way? And that takes analysis, and sometimes collaboration between government and business, to understand how that works.

The riches of successful entrepreneurs is not the cause of anybody's poverty; it is the consequence of the fact that the consumers are better supplied than they would have been in the absence of the entrepreneur's efforts.

On the unhampered market there prevails an irresistible tendency to employ every factor of production for the best possible satisfaction of the most urgent needs of the consumers. If the government interfered with this process, it can only impair satisfaction; it can never improve it.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.

A wealthy man can preserve his wealth only by continuing to serve the consumers in the most efficient way.

It is solely bigness in business which makes it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common man does not want to do without. Luxury goods for the few can be produced in small shops. Luxury goods for the many require big business.