It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative.
Interpretation
It's preferable for a person to control their wealth rather than impose authority over others, as wealth can sometimes provide an alternate means of influence.
This quote expresses the idea that managing one's financial resources is a more ethical and preferable way to exert power than dominating or controlling other individuals. It highlights the potential for wealth to serve as a non-oppressive form of influence, distinguishing monetary power from coercive authority over people's lives.
In practice
During a lecture on economic ethics, I cited Keynes to illustrate the moral implications of wealth management.
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.
Developing economies may not have much control over the headwinds that they face today, but that does not mean that they are powerless. Much can be done not just to sustain moderate growth but also to secure a more prosperous and resilient future.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
Our economy is the result of millions of decisions we all make every day about producing, earning, saving, investing, and spending.
My premise is not to tax to destroy the wealth of the wealthy; it's to increase the wealth of the bottom and the middle class.
China's government has far more control over the country's economy than our government has over ours, and it is moving from export dependence to a model of growth driven by domestic demand. Any restriction on exports to the U.S. would simply accelerate a process already underway.
The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.
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