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Milton Friedman has died “The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.”
He forced back force by the power of argument. His epitaph might be: the pen is mightier than the sword.
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There was a remarkably respectful piece about Milton Friedman on the BBC 10 O’Clock news, stressing how his monetarist views have become part of the conventional wisdom of industrialised nations and central banks, ditto his views on markets, and stressing his libertarian positions on drugs and military conscription. There was no sneering or misinterpretation. I was pleasantly surprised at how the report covered Friedman’s career in such a balanced way.
I never met him, but I have met his son David several times, and from what I understand from those who knew M. Friedman, he was not just a great economist and intellectual advocate of classical liberalism, but also a nice man too, rarely given to bad-mouthing opponents unless seriously provoked. A model to follow.
We have lost a lot of champions of freedom in recent months and years, including Ralph Harris, Arthur Seldon and Chris R. Tame. Now M. Friedman has gone to the Mt Pelerin in the sky.
Let’s carry on their work.
Great article about Friedman in the Chicago Tribune today. Today is truly a sad day fpr Libertarians and Capitalists.
Ditto, but I’d add Oriana Fallaci to your list.
A very sad loss. He will be missed. The one consolation is that he left us with books like “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom”, not to mention a vast body of scholarly work, which will continue to have influence for many years to come.
Excellent obituary(Link) and memoir by Samual Brittain in the Financial Times.
one of the greatest economists of all time – The Guardian
When did the newspaper change its mind, one wonders? It wasn’t of that opinion even 20 years ago. I doubt its readers will be implicitly admitting they were wrong as generously. (See vindictive letters forthcoming.) And is Larry Elliott, apostle of the regulated economy, on holiday?
He gave the intellectual leadership that enabled the world to fight the runaway inflation and rising unemployment of the 1970s and 1980s and hence paved the way for the long period of low inflation and growth that most of the developed world, including Britain, is now experiencing. – Hamish McRae in The Independent.
Ditto.
In our current cock fighting pit of political discourse, you would never hear something like that: the idea that maybe…just maybe!…believing cooperation to be at the heart of the human condition requires you to leave the human condition to get on with building a social society; as opposed to believing that we all need to be forced by law to realise that cooperation is what we want.
And he wrote books with his wife. Aint that jus the sweetest thing.
A week or so ago Friedman was a “question” to one of the answers on the game show Jeopary. The category had to do with economic minds. None of the contestants knew the answer to this very obvious person, but they knew who Marx was of course (as well as the other three). A sad comment that these intelligent folk didn’t know which University of Chicago professor won a Nobel Prize in 1976. Pretty much a commentary on the stranglehold the left education/MSM has on the minds of people. I wish I could describe the look on the contestants face, like “well, if you’re going to throw in such obscurities….”
Sad.
I notice that Samual Brittain slipped in the words “the success of free market polices has led to other problems”.
Milton Friedman would have asked him in which countries the state has reduced in size and scope (in some it has from Estonia to China, but in the United States government is bigger in both regulations and in government spending as a percentage of G.D.P. than it was in 1980 when “Free To Choose” came out). Professor Friedman would have also asked what, exactly, these “new problems” were and how statism was supposed to fix them.
It is always like this with Samual Britain – it starts with nice free market talk and complements, but then the knife gets shoved in the back (even in an obituary).
I remember him on the E.R.M. – he would seem to accept that Milton Friedman had pointed out the absurdity of trying to rig exchange rates, but then there would be something like “but in the new situation…..” or “in cooperation with our European partners…….”
I do not think it is really a matter of economic schools of thought. After all Milton Friedman was a great thinker of the Chicago school and I am a student (certainly no thinker) of the Austrian school – but I always had the greatest respect for Professor Friedman.
It is a matter of character, of feeling that a person was saying something because he believed it to be the truth. Or, to use blunt language, Milton Friedman was a good man and Samual Britain is a shit.
The Daily Telegraph gave a decent obituary for Milton Friedman (although I do not know who produced it), but the Times (of London) obituary was bad.
For example the Times implied that tight control of the money supply led to the increase in unemployment in Britain after 1979 – and that this led to the “death of the monetarist experiment”. Of course, the money supply went UP (a lot) after 1979 – the rise in unemployment was due to rigid wage rates in the face of recession. And the rigid wage rates were due to the legal structure of the country (i.e. the failure of James Prior and other “wets” to reform the labour market).
The “Economist” has yet to carry an obituary for Milton Friedman. I am glad there was none in this issue – the Economist was full of absurdities this week.
Poverty in Guatemala supposedly caused by taxes being too low and a lack of “land reform” (i.e. land theft). The Mexican government supposedly needs to increase government spending ever more than it has done already, and impose more antitrust regulations (for example to tackle the private telephone monopoly – even though there has not been a monopoly for ten years) and cut prices by government decree (via the orders of regulatory agencies).
If the Economist is an example of mainstream “free market” opinion then Milton Friedman had little impact (at least in the English speaking world). I know that Milton Friedman never (for example) formally opposed the absurdities of “anti trust” and certainly did not oppose the nonsensical neoclassical economic model which is trotted out to try and justify such regulations, but Milton Friedman always mocked the idea that consumers could be protected or free markets furthered by passing more regulatiuons – and he always mocked the idea that it was welfare programs (rather than civil interactions) that were the main way of reducing poverty over time.
“Why do I read the Economist if it is so bad” – ah well although there is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, when I eat my lunch (or whatever) in the local Tesco store I get to look at the Economist (along with other publications).
If the publication improved I might buy it, but as it is a quick look is more than enough.
I would add Harry Browne to that list. A great communicator of libertarian ideas. I wish I had met him.
“The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market.”
Uhm…What about religious organizations?
cj,
Friedman saw the “free market” as encompassing a wider set of voluntary transactions than just those involving money.
Not sure he was entirely consistent in that usage, but there is plenty of mention in his works of civil associations for non-commercial purposes.
Religious organizations can indeed be part of civil society (or the “non state sector” to use an ugly term). Indeed the middle ages proved that relgious organizations (the religious orders) can manage landed estates and other buiness enterprises on a large scale (within the context of a system of private ownership and money prices).
However, they can also violate the nonaggression principle – for example by demanding taxes be paid to them, or that people be punished for violating their religious instructions.
But (of course) individuals and companies can also violate the nonaggression principle – for example by demanding government subsidies, or regulations to hit their competitors.
More broadly the motives of a person may not matter that much.
A person, company or religious order may be in business in order to buy luxury (say a private plane for an individual or a gold painted interior for the church) or they may be in business to give their profits (apart from profits that are reinvested in the business) to the poor.
As long as they do not violate the nonaggression principle they will tend to aid humanity. For if they are bad at business their assets will go to people who are better (and they will have shown what not to do) and if they are good at business they will have aided people by providing better quality goods at lower prices.