Gerard Arpey Quotes

We want a free market, but we know that the paradox of a 'free' market is that sometimes you have to intervene. You have to make sure it's not the law of the jungle but the laws of democracy that works.

While admirers of capitalism, we also to a certain extent believe it has limitations that require government intervention in markets to make them work.

There is no pure free-market economy.

Markets don’t always self-correct fast enough. Until they do there is an immense amount of damage that has been done which is why we need government intervention.

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

It is right to intervene when markets are not working and people are getting hurt.

I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.

However, leaving everything to the market is not necessarily good for society.

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

…society in a modern democracy will not permit unregulated control over production and sale of its necessities.

We want free markets, but the markets are not going to take care of themselves in all cases.

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.

Our system of market capitalism wasn't handed down, in perfect form, on stone tablets. We wrote the rules. We broke them. And we can fix them.

Californians devised a system of electricity sales that ignored every dimension of the free market.

My citizen activism is a direct outgrowth of a classical and fiscally conservative training in economics at Harvard. It is a perspective rooted in one of the most important concepts in economics - the need for government intervention in the presence of a market failure.

The beauty of the free market is that everyone gets what they want. With governmentally imposed systems, it is always one size fits all.

Government intervention only hurts; it doesn't help.

I support social market economy. But it only works if there is fair competition.

It is impossible to objectively define how free a market is. This is a political definition. Government is always involved, and those free marketers are as politically motivated as anyone.

I have faith in the market when we get the rules right.

There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.

Republicans believe largely in the market working, Democrats believe stereotypically that you've got to give people something. So why not give people a chance to let the market work for them.

Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.