Cost Quotes - page 48
It is unnecessary to attempt any general rule as to where the overall balance lies in comparing the respective costs of knowledge in larger and smaller decision-making units. What is important is to understand that (1) the respective cost advantages of the large and small units differ according to the kind of knowledge involved (general versus specific), that (2) most decisions involve mixtures of the two kinds of knowledge, so that the net advantages of the larger and smaller units vary with the kind of decision, and (3) the effectiveness of hierarchical subordination varies with the extent to which the subordinate unit has knowledge advantages over the higher unit.
Thomas Sowell
To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.
Thomas Sowell
For society as a whole, nothing comes as a 'right' to which we are 'entitled.' Even bare subsistence has to be producedand produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.
Thomas Sowell
In these times - where social appearance is more important than spiritual substance - what has become our longing to change is really the unconscious desire to control not just the shape of our bodies (according to prevailing values) but to dominate our environment as well, regardless of the cost.
Guy Finley
The dialectical critique of positivist habits of mind ... is interested only in behaviour which is ‘important' to the actor; that is, behaviour which is emotionally charged to the degree that it is either frequently recalled, reflected upon, or day-dreamed about. ... That science which is less discriminating in the behaviour it chooses to investigate gains clarity and distinctiveness at the cost of confining itself to the trivial.
John Carroll
Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!
Joseph Hopkinson
