Kenneth Lay Quotes

Markets are the best way to allocate resources.

The free market is the most efficient for utilizing resources and responding to needs, but there are many human needs which find no place on the market.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

Capitalism does millions of things better than the alternatives. It balances supply and demand in an elegant way that central planning has never come close to.

Markets are a good thing, and they are the best way of ensuring we have fairness.

Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum of value. I have no doubt we can buy brass cannon at market cheaper than we could make iron ones.

My worldview says that competition is the consumer's best friend.

The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.

The much-maligned price system works not only to secure supply but to conserve. [...] Profits and prices are the street signs of the economy. Only fools flout them.

Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy.

Markets can do many wonderful things, which is why I'm glad to live in a capitalist country.

The free market is at its best when everybody works in a fishbowl and tells you their point of view.

Since scarcity is the basic economic problem, if it does not exist then there is no reason for my economics course. Devoting time to the study of how people use limited resources to fulfill unlimited wants and needs should help us to discover how to best utilize the resources we have at our disposal.

'Perfect competition' is considered both the ideal and the default state in Economics 101. So-called perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer supply meets consumer demand.

I've always believed that competition is good for consumers and good for businesses.

Voluntary association produces the free market - where each person can choose among a multitude of possibilities.

Global trade has advantages. For starters, it allows those of us who live through winter to eat fresh produce year-round. And it provides economic benefits to farmers who grow that food.

My fundamental tenets are concerned with freedom of the individual; the market isn't perfect, but it's the best available way of allocating resources.

No one has characterized market mechanisms better than Friedrich von Hayek.

Within a market, organizations have interests distinct from and often antagonistic to the market processes that produced and sustain them.

Free prices are the price of freedom.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice

It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation.

… markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs.