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But the system of prices ruling the market not only transmits information in the light of which economic agents can mutually adjust their actions, it also provides them with an incentive to exercise economy in terms of money.

The idea that in the system, if you manage it in an optimum way, all of the constituent parts of the system also win, flourish, and benefit, is intrinsic to business and even to capitalism itself, properly understood. But people don't understand it because we're not taught to think that way.

Economics is mostly how humans rationalize who gets what and why. It's how we instantiate our preferences about status, privileges, and power.

Economists create their own worlds. We're like little gods with our artificial economics, wanting to see what happens.

No economic system is perfect. But the American Free Enterprise system has empowered millions of people in the past. I know, because I saw it with my own eyes.

When you talk about the economic process of a society, sometimes we separate it into two stories. One is about monetary variables. But then, we very often assume the underlying arrangement, the other variable, is 'perfect competition,' which means people do whatever they are supposed to do.

We complain of the increased tempo of our lives, but our frenetic lives are just reflection of the economic system that we have created.

There's a very good reason for why economics developed the way it did, and that is that in many situations, the assumption that people will exploit the opportunities available to them is very plausible, and it simplifies the analysis of how markets will behave.

I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.

I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.