Quote

The free market doesn't exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.

Ha-Joon Chang

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Ha-Joon Chang
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 7
Economist
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
Freedom
Market
Free
Rules
Restrict
Doesn
Accept
Unconditionally
Looks
Exist
Restrictions
Every
Choice
Underlying
Failing
Restriction
Accepting
Boundaries
Choices
Fail

More quotes by Ha-Joon Chang

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Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.
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Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.
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Countries are poor not because their people are lazy their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.
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The Korean economic miracle was the result of a clever and pragmatic mixture of market incentives and state direction.
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People who live in poor countries have to be entrepreneurial even just to survive.
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There is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of hyperinflation and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better.
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There is no such thing as a free market.
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History is on the side of the regulators.
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A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.
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The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.
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95 percent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even for the remaining 5 percent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms.
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95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.
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Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.
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Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.
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Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.
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We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.
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People 'over-produce' pollution because they are not paying for the costs of dealing with it.
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The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history.
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Between the Great Depression and the 1970s, private business was viewed with suspicion even in most capitalist economies. Businesses were, so the story goes, seen as anti-social agents whose profit-seeking needed to be restrained for other, supposedly loftier, goals, such as justice, social harmony, protection of the weak and even national glory.
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[Good managers] know that people have 'good' sides and 'bad' sides and that the secret of good management is in magnifying the former and toning down the latter.
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