#capital

Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so.' 'But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it - why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big - and he's the servant of his property. That is so, too. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#ownership #funny

The only thing more amorous than pretending to be marriage partners is pretending to be capitalist ones. Money is less essential for success in capitalism than in marriage, so you can amuse yourself without worry. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #love #marriage #money

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff. ↗

— George Carlin

#economics-philosophy #humor #politics #humor

We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics. ↗

— P.J. O'Rourke

#economics #redistribution-of-wealth #socialism #inspirational

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#plutocracy #money

Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it's just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not inalignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet. ↗

— Russell Brand

#consumerism #love #socialism #spirituality #change

Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings. ↗

— Laurie Penny

#feminism #women #love

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that. ↗

— John Burdett

#capitalism #economics #politics #western-civilization #inspirational

Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created. Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#economics #marxism #planned-economy #socialism #imagination

There is a human capital crisis in the federal government. Not only are we losing the decades of talent as civil servants retire, we are not doing enough to develop and nurture the next generation of public servants. ↗

— Daniel Akaka

#civil #civil servants #crisis #decades #develop