John Rawls Quotes

Just because there is a market failure, doesn’t mean there is a government solution.

While I am a fervent believer in free markets and limited government, there are rare instances in which government involvement is necessary.

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

This administration in Washington that's in power now clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need, but it's the most qualified to make the most central decisions for every American in every area.

Personally, I believe that government, rather than money, tends to be the primary factor limiting the development of new technologies.

The market economy does not automatically guarantee growth, social justice, or even economic efficiency; achieving those ends requires that government play an important role.

The era of big government may be over, but the era of regulation through litigation has just begun.

Government isn't there just to administer life support to failing markets. Without the government, many of those markets would not even exist.

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.

Anyplace market forces have been artificially removed by the government there is a total absence of incentives, competition, effective oversight, cost controls and so on.

I certainly think the free-market has failed.

When the private sector fails, the solution is more government. When the government fails, the solution is more government.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

I have no interest in increasing the size of government. I just want to make sure we have got a smart government that is regulating, for example, the financial institutions smartly, so I don't have to engage in any kind of bank bailouts.

You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished.... When financial meltdowns occur, the public's outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Any large extension of the Government into business affairs - no matter what the pretense and no matter how the the extension is labeled - will be bound to promote waste and put a curb on our prosperity and progress.

I've always been a ... believer in good regulation.

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people in high places who understand the science but don't like where the policy leads them: too much government control.

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.

[E]conomic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics

The government competes in the private sector the way an alligator competes with a duck.