That in all cases, for all commodities that serve to provide for the tangible or intangible needs of the consumer, it is in the consumer's best interest that labor and trade remain free, because the freedom of labor and of trade have as their necessary and permanent result the maximum reduction of price. ~ Gustave de Molinari

In ordinary usage, price is the quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

  • By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply.
  • PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.

G - L

M - R

  • Economies are enormous groups of people engaged in a multitude of interdependent activities. What prevents decentralized decision making from degenerating into chaos? What coordinates the actions of the millions of people with their varying abilities and desires? What ensures that what needs to be done is in fact done? The answer, in a word, is prices. If an invisible hand guides market economies, as Adam Smith famously suggested, then the price system is the baton that the invisible hand uses to conduct the economic orchestra.
    • N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics (6th ed., 2012), Ch. 4. p. 83; The Market Forces of Supply and Demand

S - Z

  • Prices play a crucial role in determining how much of each resource gets used where and how the resulting products get transferred to millions of people. Yet this role is seldom understood by the public and it is often disregarded entirely by politicians.
  • Nothing makes us understand the many roles of electricity in our lives like a power failure. Similarly, nothing shows more vividly the role and importance of price fluctuations in a market economy than the absence of such price fluctuations when the market is controlled.
  • Because economic resources are not only scarce but have alternative uses, the efficient use of these resources requires both consumers and producers to make trade-offs and substitutions. Prices provide the incentives for doing so. When the price of oranges goes up, some consumers switch to tangerines. But not everyone stops eating oranges when they become more pricey. Some people continue to eat the same number of oranges they always ate, some cut back a little, some cut back a lot, and others forget about oranges completely and go on to some other fruit. Note that what is happening here is not just substitution— it is incremental substitution.

See also

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