the ones who are running the world economy have protected themselves very strongly from market discipline. the neo-liberal system is an attack, in my view, both on the market, and on democracy.

But for another thing, there's no law of nature which says that control over capital has to be in a few hands―that's like saying that political power has to be in a few hands. Why? There wasn't a law that said that the king and the nobles had to run everything, and there isn't a law that says that corporate owners and managers have to run everything either. These are social arrangements. They developed historically, they can be changed historically

Corporations barely pay taxes. The corporate tax rate is already very low, but corporations have worked out an array of complicated techniques so they often don't have to pay taxes at all... The scale of sheer robbery by corporate power is enormous.

There is tons of work to be done, and lots of people who would like to do the work. It's just that the economic system is such a grotesque catastrophe that it can't even put together idle hands and needed work, which would be satisfying to the people and which would be beneficial to all of us. That's just the mark of a failed system. The most dramatic mark of it.

One should attend carefully to the fear and desperation of the powerful. They understand very well the potential reach of the "ultimate weapon," and only hope that those who seek a more free and just world will not gain the same understanding and put it effectively to use.

Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, which was efficient but also a highly controlling device. There was a problem with the assembly line. It’s so onerous that people dropped out. They couldn’t stand it. They had to hire almost a thousand workers to see if they could get one hundred to stay on.

[A]s long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if meaningful.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.