"I think the market is always going to be around. The goal is not to say, let's get rid of the market, because the market does render a huge number of services, and I don't want to have a fight about the price of something every time I buy a book or a bottle of water"
About this Quote
Pragmatism is doing a lot of work here, and that’s the point. Susan George isn’t genuflecting to capitalism; she’s disarming the reflexive rebuttal that activists secretly want to abolish everyday life. By opening with “the market is always going to be around,” she treats the market less like an ideology and more like plumbing: a mechanism that, for all its leaks, keeps the water running. That framing preempts the caricature of the anti-market purist and repositions her critique as managerial and moral rather than utopian.
The line about not wanting to “have a fight about the price” is the shrewd pivot. It’s domestic, almost comic, and deliberately small-scale: books, bottled water. She’s invoking the friction costs of constant bargaining to remind you that markets buy convenience, predictability, and a kind of social peace. Subtext: coordination is hard, and anyone promising a frictionless alternative is either naive or selling you something.
Context matters: George’s activist lane is global justice - debt, trade, inequality - where “the market” often stands in for a set of power arrangements masquerading as neutral economics. Her intent is to separate the useful tool from the political religion built around it. She’s signaling, to allies and critics alike, that the real fight isn’t against exchange itself but against who writes the rules: which goods are treated as commodities, where profit is allowed to trump rights, and how “services” get unequally distributed. The quote works because it concedes the mundane benefits of markets while quietly sharpening the question that follows: if we’re keeping the tool, who gets to hold it?
The line about not wanting to “have a fight about the price” is the shrewd pivot. It’s domestic, almost comic, and deliberately small-scale: books, bottled water. She’s invoking the friction costs of constant bargaining to remind you that markets buy convenience, predictability, and a kind of social peace. Subtext: coordination is hard, and anyone promising a frictionless alternative is either naive or selling you something.
Context matters: George’s activist lane is global justice - debt, trade, inequality - where “the market” often stands in for a set of power arrangements masquerading as neutral economics. Her intent is to separate the useful tool from the political religion built around it. She’s signaling, to allies and critics alike, that the real fight isn’t against exchange itself but against who writes the rules: which goods are treated as commodities, where profit is allowed to trump rights, and how “services” get unequally distributed. The quote works because it concedes the mundane benefits of markets while quietly sharpening the question that follows: if we’re keeping the tool, who gets to hold it?
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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