Michael Dell: “”I have this deep-seated belief that a lot of people don’t realize their full potential because they’re too afraid to fail and too afraid to make mistakes. There’s so many ups and downs and twists and turns. In the first couple of years of business [we] could have failed at least 10 times, with all sorts of things that were going on. But that’s reality, and that’s how I think great businesses are built.” [via cnet]
John Chamberlain: “Once capitalism is seen as a profit-and-loss system, with everyone at the mercy of the sovereign consumer’s whims as he balances one marginal desire against another, the incidence of anticapitalistic criticism must shift. The capitalist who can make money in a consumer-oriented system is the one who shrewdly anticipates the customer’s desires, and under such a dispensation profit – far from being “surplus value” – becomes the deserved reward for acumen.” [via CafeHayek]
Donald Boudreaux: “Deficit financing allows today’s citizens-taxpayers to push the costs of today’s government activities onto future generations. Deficit financing thus enables today’s citizens-taxpayers to live at the expense of others. And people able to live at the expense of others will live excessively expensively. Access to deficit financing loosens the limits on government growth. Therefore, a balanced-budget requirement would indeed limit the growth of government…When you buy a car with borrowed funds, you – the same individual who borrows the funds – are the individual responsible for repaying them. So you borrow and spend prudently. But with deficit financing by government, the individuals who borrow the funds (that is, today’s citizens-taxpayers and their political representatives) are not the same individuals who are responsible for repaying them. That responsibility falls on other people; it falls on future citizens-taxpayers, many of whom aren’t yet born. Therefore, access to deficit financing gives today’s citizens-taxpayers (and their political representatives) freedom to spend more lavishly than they would were they required to pay for all government projects out of current taxes.”
