Joe Conason Quotes

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

I do not believe that the government is in any position to say exactly how every single business and every single activity shall reach those performances.

The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn't protect the environment unless it's regulated, it doesn't train your workforce unless it's regulated, and it doesn't give you the long-term investment you want.

I am not someone who tends to advocate for increased government involvement in the private sector.

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

I am one who believes that the market, properly incentivized, can consistently outperform government regulation on achieving objectives.

These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is always right - to such an extent that they refuse to believe even the most overwhelming scientific evidence if it seems to suggest a justification for government action.

A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as crabgrass springs from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores... Capitalism is a government program.

The sole function of Government is to bring about a condition of affairs favorable to the beneficial development of private enterprise.

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.

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

There are many elements needed to secure economic growth. Certainly, people must be politically free to innovate, invest, build, and create things, and they must be incentivized to do so by knowing they can keep the rewards for their efforts.

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

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism, which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.

‎"I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.

Let the corporations do as they please -- pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets -- and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven.

The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.

I want the people to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry.

Private citizens and companies are always seen as evil and greedy, because they want to profit. But the government picks your pocket any chance it can get, but they're never called greedy.

The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone.

I don't believe government should take over, you know, the grocery store down the street or own the means of production.

The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.