“From the standpoint of the civic conception, the most important role we play in the economy is not as consumers but as producers.”
“Up to now, economic development has always meant that people, instead of doing something, are enabled to buy it… Economic development has also meant that, after a time, people must buy the commodity because the conditions under which they could get along without it had disappeared from their physical, social, or cultural environment.” ~ Ivan Illich
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”~ John Ruskin (1819 – 1900)