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"If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn't be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers."
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Exlpore more Economics quotes

"We can easily imagine a monetary organization which, by the exclusive use of notes or clearing-house methods, allows all transfers to be made with the instrumentality of sums of money that never change their position in space.If differences due to the geographical position of money are disregarded in this way, we get the following law for the exchange-ratio between money and other economic goods: every economic good, that is ready for consumption (in the sense in which that phrase is usually understood in commerce and technology), has a subjective use-value qua consumption good at the place where it is and qua production good at those places to which it may be brought for consumption."

"The State does not govern the market; in the market in which products are exchanged it may quite possibly be a powerful party, but nevertheless it is only one party of many, nothing more than that. All its attempts to transform the exchange-ratios between economic goods that are determined in the market can only be undertaken with the instruments of the market."

"No individual and no nation need fear at any time to have less money than it needs. Government measures designed to regulate the international movement of money in order to ensure that the community shall have the amount it needs, are just as unnecessary and inappropriate as, say, intervention to ensure a sufficiency or corn or iron or the like. This argument dealt the Mercantilist Theory its death-blow."

"Basic economic theory. People behave differently based on how much they think something's worth. Because everyone got their chips for free, people made huge bets on every hand-no matter what they were holding. People who play with everything on the line-for real-don't act like that."

"The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite."

"When the price of coal falls because production has increased while demand has remained unaltered, then, for example, those retailers are involved who have taken supplies from the wholesale dealers at the old higher price but are now able to dispose of them only at the new and lower price. But this alone will not account for all the social changes brought about by the increase of production of coal. The increase in the supply of coal will have improved the economic position of the community."

"Let us merely discuss the question, what consequences would necessarily follow if, ceteris paribus, with an increasing quantity of money, prices were restricted to the old level by official compulsion? An increase in the quantity of money leads to the appearance in the market of new desire to purchase, which had previously not existed; 'new purchasing power', it is usual to say, has been created. If the new would-be purchasers compete with those that are already in the market, then, so long as it is not permissible to raise prices, only part of the total purchasing power can be exercised."
Explore more quotes by Bill Gates

"The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'"

"Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy."

"Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so exciting."

"Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students."

"Eventually you won't think of 'the Internet business.' You'll think of it more like news, weather, sports, but even that taxonomy isn't clear."
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