Jane Smiley Quotes

What is price gouging and what is capitalism can sometimes be a fine line.

Monopolies—the worst of all taxes.

If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.

In Europe, we would congratulate anyone who is successful. But congratulations stop if we find that you start to misuse a dominant position.

You're not supposed to go into business with the sole purpose of putting your neighbor out of business. This is not the United States of Corporate America.

Unregulated competition is a naive metaphor for anarchy.

The so-called anti-trust laws were intended to prevent the creation of monopolies and to forbid unreasonable profits to those monopolies

I am just as anxious as Mr. Brandeis can be, to have trade regulated by competition as far as possible; but as a matter of fact, competition has broken down hopelessly in this country to adequately control prices, to adequately control quality, and we all know it… it is the theory regarding competition that it will regulate prices and quality; that it will give us reasonable prices and superior quality. That is a beautiful theory. But if this theory has ever corresponded to the facts in the past (and this I doubt) we may be sure that in the future it will never again do so.

The holder of a monopoly is a sinner and offender.

The only way you can stop the unregulated monopoly ... from gouging ... is to introduce competition.

There must be reasonable restrictions upon competition else we shall see competition destroyed.

The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality …. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state.

If, as you say, the success of commercial society depends upon the full play of competition, why do not you and your confreres turn your attention and direct the shafts of your attacks against the trusts and corporations

One can be in business and pursue bad profit. That is, by practicing cronyism—rigging the system to undermine competition, innovation and opportunity, making others worse off. Good profit should lead you to improve your ability to help others improve their lives. But that’s not how many businesses act today.

My hope is that we revive 'monopoly' as a core piece of political rhetoric that broadly denotes dominant firms with pernicious powers.

Legitimate profit is good. What's bad is profiteering.

There will always be cheaters. It is human nature. It will never be 100 percent clean, in any sport.

We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market.

After we have calmly stood by and allowed monopolies to grow fat, we should not be asked to make them bloated.

The market controls everything, but the market has no heart.

I don't think we can go back to the old days. But I think that what the government needs to do is it needs to make sure that the pricing is fair, that you don't have monopolies out there, so that people don't have a chance to compete fairly.

Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way.

When the government gets involved in pricing, I don't think it's the right way to look at a business.

The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.

Microsoft is engaging in unlawful predatory practices that go well beyond the scope of fair competition.