When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.
Interpretation
Wealth will lose its value in society, leading to a shift in moral values.
In this quote, John Maynard Keynes suggests that when society no longer prioritizes the accumulation of wealth, it will lead to significant changes in ethical standards and moral behavior. This indicates that our values are closely linked to the social importance we place on financial success, and a shift away from this focus may result in a more profound ethical transformation in how we relate to one another.
In practice
In a speech about societal values, one can reference this quote to underscore the diminishing importance of wealth in our moral framework.
As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
We will not have any more crashes in our time.
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.
You have to remember: what are incomes to banks are outgoes to families.
When money is free, the rational lender will keep on lending until there is no one else to lend to.
The truth of good economic doctoring is to know the general principles, and to really know the specifics. To understand the context, and also, to understand that an economy may need some tender loving care, not just the so-called hard truths, if it's going to get by.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -- and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.