Wisdom on the Topic of value creation
Quotations
Capitalists who worship only at the feet of capitalism
Democratic capitalism is a wonderful device precisely because it maximizes the ability of individuals within society to singly and collectively pursue the ends that they find to be important and meaningful; the accomplishments of a capitalistic society are noble and grand to the extent that the ends pursued by its individuals aspire to these lofty goals, and bereft to the extent that the intentions of its citizens are mean and unworthy; nothing makes capitalism appear more hollow than capitalists who worship only at the feet of capitalism: they are like workmen who have fallen in love with their tools, while blind to the glories of the cathedrals these tools have built and can yet build.
Economics is essentially a question of design
Economics, it turns out, is not a matter of discovering laws: it is essentially a question of design.
Economies that make us thrive
Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive; what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.
Exponential growth in a finite world
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
The growth of firms
All the evidence we have indicates that the growth of firms is connected with the attempts of a particular group of human beings to do something.
The increase of wealth is not boundless
The increase of wealth is not boundless. A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the art of living, and much more likelihood of it being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on.
Invest in your employees
I give them [other business owners] the same advice my grandfather had when he was starting the business [Dick’s Drive-Ins]. A business, first step, is it has to make a profit. The next step is to invest in your employees. They’ll take better care of your customers, which will help you earn more profit. When they move on from your business and do other things, they’re evangelists for your company and that helps you make more profit. Once that virtuous cycle is going, you can also invest in your community because if your community is thriving, your business will thrive. And so for these businesses that come to us asking what they should do first, the biggest thing I tell them is to talk to your employees. Ask them what it is that your employee population would want. Talk to them! Start with that. And if you can’t do it for everybody or everything that they would want, just do some part of it, then work your way up from there.
It's the rich class that's winning
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
Lean
“Creating ever more value for customers with ever fewer resources” is … all I have ever meant by “lean”.
Liberalism is not Socialism
Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be. There is a great gulf fixed. It is not a gulf of method, it is a gulf of principle. … Socialism seeks to pull down wealth. Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference … Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly.
Life is a series of daring adventures from a secure base
Human development research offers a different formula: All of life is a series of daring adventures from a secure base. If government can create a framework in which people grow up amid healthy families, nurturing schools, thick communities and a secure safety net, then they will have the resources and audacity to thrive in a free global economy and a diversifying skills economy.
Luxuries tend to become necessities
One of history’s fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it.
Managing our planetary household
The word ‘economics’ was coined by the philosopher Xenophon in Ancient Greece. Combining oikos meaning household with nomos meaning rules or norms, he invented the art of household management, and it could not be more relevant today. This century we need some pretty insightful managers to guide our planetary household, and ones who are ready to pay attention to the needs of all of its inhabitants.
A Man of Value
Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.
Only Two Sources of Real Wealth
We have had to learn the bitter lesson that in all the world there are only two sources of real wealth: the fruit of the earth and the labor of men; and to estimate work not by the money it brings to the producer, but by the worth of the thing that is made.
The Power of Stakeholder Capitalism
Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not “woke.” It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper. This is the power of capitalism.
A Progressive Annual Tax on Capital
The right solution is a progressive annual tax on capital. This will make it possible to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral while preserving competition and incentives for new instances of primitive accumulation…. This would contain the unlimited growth of global inequality of wealth, which is currently increasing at a rate that cannot be sustained in the long run and that ought to worry even the most fervent champions of the self-regulated market. Historical experience shows, moreover, that such immense inequalities of wealth have little to do with the entrepreneurial spirit and are of no use in promoting growth. Nor are they of any ‘common utility,’ to borrow the nice expression from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen with which I began this book.
Shareholder Value
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. … Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.
Technological Unemployment
We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.
We need governments to provide clear pathways
Capitalism has the power to shape society and act as a powerful catalyst for change. But businesses can’t do this alone, and they cannot be the climate police. That will not be a good outcome for society. We need governments to provide clear pathways and a consistent taxonomy for sustainability policy, regulation, and disclosure across markets. When we harness the power of both the public and private sectors, we can achieve truly incredible things. This is what we must do to get to net zero.
Workers demanding more from their employers
Workers demanding more from their employers is an essential feature of effective capitalism. It drives prosperity and creates a more competitive landscape for talent, pushing companies to create better, more innovative environments for their employees – actions that will help them achieve greater profits for their shareholders. Companies that deliver are reaping the rewards.
A Work Ethic Gone Mad
The blend of corporate mysticism and transcendental consumerism he [Tom Peters] offers has its roots planted in the pragmatic, optimistic, can-do American work ethic. But, like the Taylorist philosophy from which it springs, it is also a work ethic gone mad. It begins with the idea that work can be meaningful and stretches it to the point where there is no meaning outside work. It becomes a deluded form of optimism, a feverish activity that masks an underlying anxiety about the meaning of life, a form of self-alienation so complete that the self disappears entirely into its consumer preferences and transactions.
Work, Soul and Life
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Worshipping the divine right of capital
Future economic historians may look back wryly at this period when we worshipped the divine right of capital while looking down on our ancestors who believed in the divine right of kings.
The yen to work drops in flat economies
Writing in the 1950s, Daniel Bell, the great American sociologist, said ‘economic growth has become the secular religion of advancing industrial societies’. He was right. It follows that in its absence, many people lapse into the equivalent of atheism. That sense of listlessness shows up in many ways. In the labour market, it means falling rates of workforce participation. Much as the desire to worship falls in agnostic societies, the yen to work drops in flat economies. In the last decade, America’s share of people in full-time jobs has dropped to European levels, which used to be written off as a sclerotic consequence of the continent’s over-regulated labour markets. Now the US rate is bang on the European average. In some respects it is worse. There is now a higher share of French males in full-time jobs than Americans – a statistic that reflects poorly on America, rather than well on France.
You have to create more than you consume
If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.