#capitalism

Life is about means not ends. There is no utopia to be gained, there is no end-state that is static and eternal, once accomplished. This was one of the great lies of communism. Likewise, capitalism offers the great deception that thanks to its machinations everyone will be richer in the future, thus justifying gross inequality and humiliation today. ↗

— Carne Ross

#communism #politics #utopia #change

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. ↗

— Rutherford B. Hayes

#corporations #government #occupy-wall-street #ows #potus

Case had always taken it for granted that the real bosses, the kingpins in a given industry, would be both more and less than people... He'd seen it in the men who'd crippled him in Memphis, he'd seen Wage affect the semblance of it in Night City, and it had allowed him to accept Armitrage's flatness and lack of feeling. He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism. It was the root of street cool, too, the knowing posture that implied connection, invisible lines up to hidden levels of influence. ↗

— William Gibson

#imagination

Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. ↗

— Alain Badiou

#contrary #destructive #good #humanity #liberal

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. ↗

— Al Capone

#class #legitimate #racket #ruling #ruling class

If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since. ↗

— Tom Hodgkinson

#anarchism #capitalism #freedom #freedom

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you're just going to keep buying and selling things until there's nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet. ↗

— Alice Walker

#big #big problem #buy #buying #capitalism

I believe the accepted model of capitalism that demands endless growth deserves the blame for the destruction of nature, and it should be displaced. Failing that, I try to work with those companies and help them change the way they think about our resources. ↗

— Yvon Chouinard

#accepted #believe #blame #capitalism #change

The recent Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists over twenty thousand specialized professions in America; being a millionaire is not one of them. ↗

— Jerzy Kosiński

#millionaire #money #wealth #money

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to. ↗

— Larry Elder

#america #call #capitalism #consequences #failure