The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of private ownership in achieving a better quality of life.
Ludwig Von Mises argues that in order to prioritize life, happiness, and well-being, one must uphold and defend private ownership of production resources. This reflects a libertarian philosophy, suggesting that individual ownership and freedom are fundamental to achieving progress and fulfillment in society.
In practice
During a debate about economic systems, one might use this quote to advocate for capitalism.
The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.
Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
Death, the real simile for disease - for when we are ill, do we not always feel like we are dying, even if it's only a little? - remains, despite our secularism, the most metaphoricised phenomenon of all.
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.
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