Henry Hazlitt Quotes
We are so accustomed to the miracle of private enterprise that we habitually take it for granted. But how does private industry solve the incredibly complex problem of turning out tens of thousands of different goods and services in the proportions in which they are wanted by the public? ... It solves these problems through the institutions of private property, competition, the free market, and the existence of money - through the interrelations of supply and demand, costs and prices, profits and losses.
Hazlitt, Henry. Economics in One Lesson. Harper & Brothers, 1946, p. 102.
[Most theoretical conservative economists believe this. When presented with the reality of market systems where great damage was done to people and areas, as in the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession in 2008, they tend to argue that these were not really free markets—–that for various reasons, often they argue that government interference, corrupted the free market. Almost all economists would agree that if there were real highly competitive market his quote would be corrupt, but many have shown that the very greed that is produced by a free market tends to make the major players transform the market to reduce their risk and increase their power, thus producing monopoly, oligarchy, collusion, and anti-competitive practices. Greed is never harmless if it gets enough power.]
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American journalist who wrote about business and economics for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times.
