Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
Interpretation
Economies should prioritize human needs rather than control them.
This quote emphasizes the role of economies in serving humanity, warning against letting markets dictate human priorities. It suggests that while markets can effectively facilitate human prosperity, relying on them too heavily can lead to negative consequences, acting as a dangerous driving force rather than a beneficial tool.
In practice
In a discussion about economic policy, this quote can remind policymakers to focus on human welfare.
Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we need no longer have-and it's cheaper not to. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated by proven and attractive technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security.
Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies._x000D_ _x000D_ No sensible capitalist would do that.
Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.
The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.
If you go back to the really long-run questions that interested me, the big question was why, over the centuries, the millennia, has growth been speeding up?
Economic policies absorb almost the entire attention of government, and at the same time become ever more impotent. The simplest things, which only fifty years ago one could do without difficulty, cannot get done any more. The richer a society, the more impossible it become to do worthwhile things without immediate payoff.
Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.
The culture of self-gratification and deregulation that began during the Clinton years and continued under President George W. Bush led to the bursting of one stock market bubble at the turn of the century and a full-scale financial crash less than a decade later.
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