Common Law of Business Balance

The Common Law of Business Balance is a meditation on price attributed to John Ruskin. It reads as follows:

"There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey. 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 is 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."

This is a classic quote on the possible folly of automatically choosing low cost as the best way to make a purchase decision. It appeals to those who believe, or who want to persuade others to believe, that price is a possible indicator of quality.


Famous quotes containing the words common, law, business and/or balance:

    “Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.”
    —Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

    “Listen, little boy. In this business, there’s only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin’ it.”
    —Ben Hecht (1893–1964)

    “Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.”
    —Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

    “If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
    —Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)