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A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

Ludwig von Mises

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Ludwig von Mises
Age: 92 †
Born: 1881
Born: September 29
Died: 1973
Died: October 10
Economist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Mises
Social
Alternatives
Two
Socialism
Doe
Systems
Live
Capitalism
Human
Beings
Disintegration
Humans
Choose
Chooses
Men
System
Alternative
Society
Cooperation

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In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal.
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It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary.
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There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
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The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties were eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.
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Do the American voters know that the unprecedented improvement in their standard of living that the last hundred years brought was the result of the steady rise in the per-head quota of capital invested? Do they realize that every measure leading to capital decumulation jeopardizes their prosperity?
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A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!
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What workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.
Ludwig von Mises
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Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
Ludwig von Mises
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To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better....Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire.
Ludwig von Mises
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Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little.
Ludwig von Mises
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Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
Ludwig von Mises
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The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody...It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.
Ludwig von Mises
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The salesman thanks the customer for patronizing his shop and asks him to come again. But the socialists say: Be grateful to Hitler, render thanks to Stalin be nice and submissive, then the great man will be kind to you later too.
Ludwig von Mises
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Fortunes cannot grow someone has to increase them.
Ludwig von Mises
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No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
Ludwig von Mises
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Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.
Ludwig von Mises
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Man is born an asocial and antisocial being. The newborn child is a savage. Egoism is his nature. Only the experience of life and the teachings of his parents, his brothers, sisters, playmates, and later of other people FORCE HIM to acknowledge the advantages of social cooperation and accordingly to change his behavior.
Ludwig von Mises
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All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously.
Ludwig von Mises
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In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.
Ludwig von Mises
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The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
Ludwig von Mises