Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can't really wake her up, but there's things she's still good for.

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market.

Genua had once controlled the rivermouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracybecause it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economicsand perfectly all right

I will say further, as an officer of an enormous international conglomerate, that nobody who is doing well in this economy ever even wonders waht is really going on.We are chimpanzees. We are orangutans.

With an evermore increase of industrialisation machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.

Our entire economy is based on productivity measures that have little to do with “human input”. Sooner or later the entire system will collapse revealing the fallacy of an economy based on finance.

Self-preservation—this is your new focus. The only obligation of today is to preserve the breath of tomorrow. Then, once footing is regained, you can begin to fulfill debt obligations. Debt is hindsight.

It seems even more worrisome that the world has become even more integrated to the extent that a country that fails to produce its own basic consumables will end up consuming its whole income in outsourcing them.

Salespeople move an economy of a nation. Someone could have invented the most amazing invention that is going to be a revolution for a planet, but that product goes nowhere unless someone sells it to someone else.

If young men and young women are brought up to consider frugality contemptible, and industry degrading, it is vain to expect they will at once become prudent and useful, when the cares of life press heavily upon them.

The present convergence of crises––in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more––is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.

Reliability investing requires finding companies trading below their inherent worth--stocks with strong fundamentals including earnings, dividends, book value, and cash flow selling at bargain prices give their quality.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.

The real question is: How sturdy and solid is the floor our civilization stands on? How many lives with no prospects, shattered and senseless, can it bear the weight of before it cracks somewhere or other, splits at the joints?

They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.