Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.

Obviously we're a consumer nation and you have the power to influence these big corporations who are running the world right now through what you chose to, or not to, purchase.

Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.

When you offer consumers choice, let them vote with their wallets.

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.

The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.

What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.

In terms of merchandise, you can't force anyone to buy something.

It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruling factor in economic life.

there are times when we need to step in to make sure that competition works the way it should. By doing that, we help the market to work fairly, because competition gives consumers the power to demand a fair deal. It means that companies know that if they cannot offer good prices or the service that's expected, well, the customers will go somewhere else.

I think that, in the end, the consumer's going to win on the Internet.

The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.

The industry cannot long offer unneeded or overpriced insurance if people will not buy it.

The fact is that, under a capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign is not the state, it is the people.

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.

[The consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.

If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.

I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want.

The masses, in their capacity as consumers, ultimately determine everybody's revenues and wealth.

The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better or more cheaply.

When we call a capitalist society a consumers democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers ballot, held daily in the marketplace.

The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.

If you don't like tomato soup, you don't buy tomato soup.