"All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations."
-- Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004) American President
"The tragedy of the commons ... is averted by private property"
-- Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) American Ecologist and author of Tragedy of the Commons
"Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."
-- Milton Friedman (1912-2006) American Nobel Laureate economist
"While it might surprise many ecologists to hear, capitalism is itself the ultimate form of conservationism. Capitalists seek to conserve resources, not because of sentimental feelings about nature or the earth or whales or worry about the well-being of future generations, but simply because every drop of oil, every ton of ore, every shipment of wood saved is a cost reduction and money in the pocket. "
-- Steven E Plaut (1951-2017) Israeli economist
"private property plus inheritance is unjust but we put up with it because we are not convinced, at the moment, that anyone has invented a better system. The alternative of the commons is too horrifying to contemplate. Injustice is preferable to total ruin."
-- Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) American Ecologist and author of Tragedy of the Commons
-- The Principles of the Free Market