We have seen that society is an exchange of services, and should be but an exchange of good and honest ones. But we have also proven that men have a great interest in exaggerating the relative value of the services they render one another. I cannot, indeed, see any other limit to these claims than the free acceptance or free refusal of those to whom these services are offered.

If you wish to prosper, let your customers do the same.

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.

If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

A fair price is the amount agreed upon by the buyer and seller.

There is in the social system of the market society no other means of acquiring wealth and of preserving it than successful service to the consumers.

The paradox of planning is that it cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation. What is called a planned economy is no economy at all.

[C]ommerce...is a pacific system, operating to cordialize mankind, by rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other.

The free market...frees each and all of us from the impossible task of assembling the billions upon billions of data behind our daily decisions.

[T]he labor theory of value held scholarly sway prior to [the marginal theory of value]. It contended that value was determined by the amount of effort expended. Under the labor theory of value the mud pie makers should receive the same return for their efforts as the mince pie makers. The only way to accomplish this–consumers being unwilling to exchange the fruits of their labor for mud pies–is for the government to subsidize the mud pie markers by taking from the mince pie makers...The labor theory of value, proved over and over again to be the enemy of both justice and sound economics, nonetheless continues to gain in popular acceptance.

Value has nothing whatsoever to do with effort exerted; value is what others will willingly exchange for one’s goods or services.

How much economics does one have to know to settle...how and by whom economic justice shall be rendered...only this...Let the payment for each individual’s contribution be determined by what others will offer in willing exchange...This simple theory of value, the greatest discovery in economic science–never formalized until the year 1870–is known as the marginal theory of value.

[T]he market price exists... to provide an evaluation of the value of resources relative to their availability, their desirability, and the costs associated with delivering them. Ah, prices! How we take them for granted! In fact, they are guides to the conduct of life itself. What should you have for dinner? Should you take that vacation or not? Should you buy or rent? Should you supplement your wardrobe or not? Should you heat your house till it's warm and cozy or just wear a sweater indoors? All these decisions are made based on the price of things. They are what make rational daily living possible. Without them, all would be chaos. But somehow, in a time of crisis when prices leap around in various directions, doing their job to coordinate supply and demand and conserve resources to overcome the uncertainty of the future, all this wisdom is forgotten. Consumers suddenly look at their retailer as the enemy and the government starts taking names. The worst part is that it is precisely during times of market uncertainty and change that prices are needed more than ever to coordinate resources. When the oil price rises, it suggests more supply is needed. More precisely, it sends two signals: to consumers it says conserve, and to producers it says invest. If nothing else changes, and people follow the price signals, the price will end up falling as consumers cut back purchases and producers bring more product to market. Putting a price ceiling on oil will short circuit this mechanism, causing producers to offer no more than is currently available (or even less), and consumers to continue buying as much as they always have. Again, if nothing else changes, the result will be shortages, which the government will attempt to rectify through ever more stupid policies.

ROCKWELL, JR., LLEWELYN, War on Gougers, February 24, 2003

Mises demonstrated that, in any economy more complex than the Crusoe or primitive family level, the socialist planning board would simply not know what to do, or how to answer any of these vital questions. Developing the momentous concept of calculation, Mises pointed out that the planning board could not answer these questions because socialism would lack the indispensable tool that private entrepreneurs use to appraise and calculate: the existence of a market in the means of production, a market that brings about money prices based on genuine profit-seeking exchanges by private owners of these means of production. Since the very essence of socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, the planning board would not be able to plan, or to make any sort of rational economic decisions. Its decisions would necessarily be completely arbitrary and chaotic, and therefore the existence of a socialist planned economy is literally 'impossible' (to use a term long ridiculed by Mises's critics).

While under precapitalistic conditions superior men were the masters on whom the masses of the inferior had to attend, under capitalism the more gifted and more able have no means to profit from their superiority other than to serve to the best of their abilities the wishes of the majority of the less gifted. In the market economic power is vested in the consumers.