Background Image

...

A Society That Puts Equality — In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome — Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom, And The Force, Introduced For Good Purposes, Will End Up In The Hands Of People Who Use It To Promote Their Own Interests.

-Milton Friedman

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

A Society That Puts

Milton Friedman

...

A Society That Puts Equality — In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome — Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom, And The Force, Introduced For Good Purposes, Will End Up In The Hands Of People Who Use It To Promote Their Own Interests.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Milton Friedman

Only A Crisis - Actual Or Perceived - Produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around. That, I Believe, Is Our Basic Function: To Develop Alternatives To Existing Policies, To Keep Them Alive And Available Until The Politically Impossible Becomes The Politically Inevitable.

I Think In Some Ways It Would Make More Sense To Have As A Poverty Level A Relative Concept And Say, The Level Of Poverty Is That Level Of Income Or That Level Of Consumption Below Which 10 Percent Of The People Now Are.

The Federal Reserve The Privately Owned U.s. Central Bank Definitely Caused The Great Depression By Contracting The Amount Of Currency In Circulation By One Third From 1929 To 1933.

Great Depression

Federal Reserve

We Have A Freer World Because Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Changes In China. Those Two Have Been The Main Contributors To Freedom In Our Time.

The Government Doesn't Have Any Money. The Only Power It Has Is To Take From Some And Give To Others.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output.

If Capitalism Worked As The Socialists Think An Economic System Ought To Work, And Provided A Constant Equality Of Living Conditions For All, Regardless Of Whether A Man Was Able Or Not, Resourceful Or Not, Diligent Or Not, Thrifty Or Not, If Capitalism Put No Premiums On Resourcefulness And Effort And Not Penalty On Idleness Or Vice, It Would Produce Only An Equality Of Destitution.

Statistics Do Not Speak For Themselves.

The Growing Role That The Government Has Played In Financing And Administering Schooling Has Led Not Only The Enormous Waste Of Taxpayers Money But Also To A Far Poorer Educational System.

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple If False; It Is An Immediate Emotional Argument. The Argument For Individualism Is Subtle And Sophisticated; It Is An Indirect Rational Argument. And The Emotional Faculties Are More Highly Developed In Most Men Than The Rational, Paradoxically Or Especially Even In Those Who Regard Themselves As Intellectuals.

Education Spending Will Be Most Effective If It Relies On Parental Choice & Private Initiative -- The Building Blocks Of Success Throughout Our Society.

I Would Say That In This World, The Greatest Source Of Inequality Has Been Special Privileges Granted By Government.

The Government Solution To A Problem Is Usually As Bad As The Problem.

One Man's Opportunism Is Another Man's Statesmanship.

You Must Distinguish Sharply Between Being Pro Free Enterprise And Being Pro Business.

Free Enterprise

It Is Most Attractive About The Us To People And Countries With Wealth Is That It Can Provide Security, Insurance Really, Against Political Instability. Nobody Is Afraid That The Money They Place In The Us Is At Risk Of Expropriation Or Of In Some Other Way Being Taken Away. For This Safety, The Wealth Holders Of The World Are Willing To Accept A Lower Rate Of Return.

A Private Enterprise System Needs Some Measuring Rod, It Needs Something, It Needs Money To Make Its Transactions. You Can't Run A Big Complicated System Through Barter, Through Converting One Commodity Into Another. You Need A Monetary System To Operate. And The Instability In That Monetary System Is Devastating To The Performance Of The Economy.

How Can We Keep The Government We Create From Becoming A Frankenstein That Will Destroy The Very Freedom We Establish It To Protect? Freedom Is A Rare And Delicate Plant.

Everywhere, And At All Times, Economic Progress Has Meant Far More To The Poor Than To The Rich.

The Countries That Have Risen And Separated Out As A Result Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union Are, On The Whole, Following Freer Economic Policies. Most Of These States Have Freer Government And Less Restrictions On Trade.

The Same Thing Will Happen In China That Happened In Chile. Political Freedom Will Ultimately Break Out Of Its Shackles. Tiananmen Square Was Only The First Episode. It Is Headed For A Series Of Tiananmen Squares. It Cannot Continue To Develop Privately And At The Same Time Maintain Its Authoritarian Character Politically. It Is Headed For A Clash. Sooner Or Later, One Or The Other Will Give.

The Problem Of Social Organization Is How To Set Up An Arrangement Under Which Greed Will Do The Least Harm, Capitalism Is That Kind Of A System.

Never Try To Walk Across A River Just Because It Has An Average Depth Of Four Feet.

By Encouraging Men To Spy And Report On One Another, By Making It In The Private Interest Of Large Numbers Of Citizens To Evade The Controls, And By Making Actions Illegal That Are In The Public Interest, The Controls Undermine Individual Morality.

Political Freedom Means The Absence Of Coercion Of A Man By His Fellow Men.

What You Have As A Result Of Past Policies Is That German Entrepreneurs Go Outside Of Germany For Many Of Their Activities. They Are Investing Abroad Instead Of At Home Because There Isn't The Openness, Fluidity And Opportunity They Find Outside Their Borders.

Only Government Can Take Perfectly Good Paper, Cover It With Perfectly Good Ink And Make The Combination Worthless.

A Society That Aims For Equality Before Liberty Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Liberty. And A Society That Aims First For Liberty Will Not End Up With Equality, But It Will End Up With A Closer Approach To Equality Than Any Other Kind Of System That Has Ever Been Developed.

There Is No Person, No Theorist So Reckless As He Who Says That The Facts Speak For Themselves.

Inflation Is Taxation Without Legislation.

The Price Works So Well, So Efficiently, That We Are Not Aware Of It Most Of The Time.

The True Test Of Any Scholar's Work Is Not What His Contemporaries Say, But What Happens To His Work In The Next 25 Or 50 Years.

What Works For Sweden Wouldn't Work For France Or Germany Or Italy. In A Small State, You Can Reach Outside For Many Of Your Activities. In A Homogeneous Culture, They Are Willing To Pay Higher Taxes In Order To Achieve Commonly Held Goals. But "common Goals" Are Much Harder To Come By In Larger, More Heterogeneous Populations.

People Hired By Government Know Who Is Their Benefactor. People Who Lose Their Jobs Or Fail To Get Them Because Of The Government Program Do Not Know That That Is The Source Of Their Problem. The Good Effects Are Visible. The Bad Effects Are Invisible. The Good Effects Generate Votes. The Bad Effects Generate Discontent, Which Is As Likely To Be Directed At Private Business As At The Government.

Is It Really True That Political Self-interest Is Nobler Somehow Than Economic Self-interest?

There's No Doubt In My Mind That Ronald Reagan Was By Far The Greatest. Because He Had Real Principles And He Stuck By Them. He Made Clear What He Was Going To Do, And He Did It. He Didn't Back Down.

I Am A Limited-government Libertarian.

Limited Government

The Soviet Experience Was Much Worse Than Experts In The West Had Thought. That Discovery Had A Tremendous Impact Both On The Intellectual Community And On The Public At Large.

One Role Of Prohibition Is In Making The Drug Market More Lucrative.

We Economists Don't Know Much, But We Do Know How To Create A Shortage. If You Want To Create A Shortage Of Tomatoes, For Example, Just Pass A Law That Retailers Can't Sell Tomatoes For More Than Two Cents Per Pound. Instantly You'll Have A Tomato Shortage. It's The Same With Oil Or Gas.

I Know Of No Example In Time Or Place Of A Society That Has Been Marked By A Large Measure Of Political Freedom, And That Has Not Also Used Something Comparable To A Free Market To Organize The Bulk Of Economic Activity.

The Great Virtue Of A Free Market Is That It Enables People Who Hate Each Other, Or Who Are From Vastly Different Religious Or Ethnic Backgrounds, To Cooperate Economically. Government Intervention Can't Do That.

Business Corporations In General Are Not Defenders Of Free Enterprise. On The Contrary, They Are One Of The Chief Sources Of Danger....every Businessman Is In Favor Of Freedom For Everybody Else, But When It Comes To Himself That's A Different Question. We Have To Have That Tariff To Protect Us Against Competition From Abroad. We Have To Have That Special Provision In The Tax Code. We Have To Have That Subsidy.

Economists May Not Know How To Run The Economy, But They Know How To Create Shortages Or Gluts Simply By Regulating Prices Below The Market, Or Artificially Supporting Them From Above.

The Free Market Is Not Only A More Efficient Decision Maker Than Even The Wisest Central Planning Body, But Even More Important, The Free Market Keeps Economic Power Widely Dispersed.

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

Many People Want The Government To Protect The Consumer. A Much More Urgent Problem Is To Protect The Consumer From The Government.

What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

I Do Not Believe That The Solution To Our Problem Is Simply To Elect The Right People. The Important Thing Is To Establish A Political Climate Of Opinion Which Will Make It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing. Unless It Is Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing, The Right People Will Not Do The Right Thing Either, Or It They Try, They Will Shortly Be Out Of Office.

A Crackpot Theory. Instead Of Saying Labor's Exploited, As Marx Did, Kelso Says Capital's Exploited. It's Worse Than Marx. It's Marx Stood On Its Head.

Thanks To Economists, All Of Us, From The Days Of Adam Smith And Before Right Down To The Present, Tariffs Are Perhaps One Tenth Of One Percent Lower Than They Otherwise Would Have Been. And Because Of Our Efforts, We Have Earned Our Salaries Ten-thousand Fold.

If You Put The Federal Government In Charge Of The Sahara Desert, In 5 Years There'd Be A Shortage Of Sand.

When They So-called 'target The Interest Rate', What They're Doing Is Controlling The Money Supply Via The Interest Rate. The Interest Rate Is Only An Intermediary Instrument.

The Key Insight Of Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations Is Misleadingly Simple: If An Exchange Between Two Parties Is Voluntary, It Will Not Take Place Unless Both Believe They Will Benefit From It. Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Neglect Of This Simple Insight, From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

Rich People Are The Experimental Ground For Every New Development. The Nature Of Progress Is That What Begins As A Luxury For The Rich Becomes A Necessity For The Poor As It's Developed And Passed On.

A Society Based On The Freedom To Choose Is Better Than A Society Based On The Principles Of Socialism, Communism And Coercion.

The Most Important Ways In Which I Think The Internet Will Affect The Big Issue Is That It Will Make It More Difficult For Government To Collect Taxes.

The Argument For The Free Market Is A Complicated And Sophisticated One And Depends On Demonstration Of Secondary Effects. I Have Confidence Market Efficiency Will Win Out.

Market Efficiency

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.

Rapid Increases In The Quantity Of Money Produce Inflation. Sharp Decreases Produce Depression.

The Euro Is Going To Be A Big Source Of Problems, Not A Source Of Help.

Only A Crisis, Actual Or Perceived, Produces Real Change.

If Even A Small Fraction Of The Money We Now Spend On Trying To Enforce Drug Prohibition Were Devoted To Treatment And Drug Rehabilitation, In An Atmosphere Of Compassion Not Punishment, The Reduction In Drug Usage And In The Harm Done To Users Could Be Dramatic.

We Don't Have A Desperate Need To Grow. We Have A Desperate Desire To Grow.

You Can Only Make Money If You Buy A Product, Whatever It Is - Maybe A Currency, Maybe Wheat And Maybe Something Else - At A Relatively Low Price And Sell It At A Higher Price Than You Buy It At. There's No Other Way To Make Money.

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own. Nobody Uses Somebody Else's Resources As Carefully As He Uses His Own. So If You Want Efficiency And Effectiveness, If You Want Knowledge To Be Properly Utilized, You Have To Do It Through The Means Of Private Property.

See, If You Look At The Drug War From A Purely Economic Point Of View, The Role Of The Government Is To Protect The Drug Cartel. That's Literally True.

In The Current World, With The Skills Needed, Dropouts [like No Secondary Education] Are Condemned To Being Members Of The Underclass. In My View, This Is A Fault Of The American School System, Which Is A Government Monopoly.

What Kind Of Society Isn't Structured On Greed?

What Most People Really Object To When They Object To A Free Market Is That It Is So Hard For Them To Shape It To Their Own Will. The Market Gives People What The People Want Instead Of What Other People Think They Ought To Want. At The Bottom Of Many Criticisms Of The Market Economy Is Really Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

If The Government Is To Try And Ban Private Consumption Of Alcohol And Tobacco, It Must Surely Ban Such Activities As Hang-gliding, Skiing, Rock-climbing And So On. Where Should It Stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar As The Government Has Information Not Generally Available About The Merits Or Demerits Of The Items We Ingest Or The Activities We Engage In, Let It Give Us The Information. But Let It Leave Us Free To Choose What Chances We Want To Take With Our Own Lives.

Economists May Not Know Much. But We Know One Thing Very Well: How To Produce Surpluses And Shortages. Do You Want A Surplus? Have The Government Legislate A Minimum Price That Is Above The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail. That Is What We Have Done At One Time Or Another To Produce Surpluses Of Wheat, Of Sugar, Of Butter, Of Many Other Commodities. Do You Want A Shortage? Have The Government Legislate A Maximum Price That Is Below The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail.

Even The Most Ardent Environmentalist Doesn't Really Want To Stop Pollution. If He Thinks About It, And Doesn't Just Talk About It, He Wants To Have The Right Amount Of Pollution. We Can't Really Afford To Eliminate It - Not Without Abandoning All The Benefits Of Technology That We Not Only Enjoy But On Which We Depend.

If Freedom Led To Wider Inequality, I Would Prefer That To A World In Which I Got Artificial Equality At The Expense Of Freedom. My Objective, My God... Is Freedom Of Individuals To Pursue Their Own Values.

It Doesn't Worry Me A Bit That China And Japan Hold So Much Us Debt. In A Way, It Seems Foolish For Them To Do It Because They Get Lower Returns Than They Might Elsewhere. But That Is Their Business.

Japan Has Introduced Fiscal Stimulus Five Times In The Past Seven Or Eight Years And Each Time It's Been A Failure And That's Not A Surprise. Fiscal Stimulus Is Not Stimulating In And Of Itself.

The Only Reason There Is A Crisis About Social Security In The Us And Pensions In Europe And Japan Is That You Cannot Maintain A "ponzi" Scheme Indefinitely. We Have Collected From Today's Young To Pay Today's Old And Counted On Tomorrow's Young To Keep Doing So. That Was A Fine Scheme As Long As The Number Of Young People Was Rising Faster Than Old People. When That Ratio Comes To An End, Such A System Also Has To End.

But On The Other Hand, If You Come Under Circumstances Where Each Person Is Entitled To A Pro-rata Share Of The Pot, To Take An Extreme Example, Or Even To A Low Level Of The Pie, Than The Effect Of That Situation Is That Free Immigration, Would Mean A Reduction Of Everybody To The Same, Uniform Level. Of Course, I'm Exaggerating, It Wouldn't Go Quite That Far, But It Would Go In That Direction. And It Is That Perception, That Leads People To Adopt What At First Seems Like Inconsistent Values.

Drugs Are A Tragedy For Addicts. But Criminalizing Their Use Converts That Tragedy Into A Disaster For Society, For Users And Non-users Alike. Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Drugs Is A Replay Of Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages.

Why Is It That Private Insurance Companies Are Not In Trouble Because People Are Getting Older? Aren't They Subject To The Same Demographics? The Difference Is That They've Accumulated A Fund, Not A Pay-in, Pay-out System.

The Only Reason Free Markets Have A Ghost Of A Chance Is That They Are So Much More Efficient Than Any Other Form Of Organization.

If You Pay People Not To Work And Tax Them When They Do, Don't Be Surprised If You Get Unemployment.

[t]he Burden Of Government Is Not Measured By How Much It Taxes, But By How Much It Spends.

Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Disadvantaged To Become Tomorrow's Privileged And, In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Fuller And Richer Life.

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple; Free Market Is Not.

Concentrated Power Is Not Rendered Harmless By The Good Intentions Of Those Who Create It.

Indeed, A Major Source Of Objection To A Free Economy Is Precisely That It... Gives People What They Want Instead Of What A Particular Group Thinks They Ought To Want. Underlying Most Arguments Against The Free Market Is A Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

My Monetary Studies Have Led Me To The Conclusion That Central Banks Could Profitably Be Replaced By Computers Geared To Provide A Steady Rate Of Growth In The Quantity Of Money. Fortunately For Me Personally, And For A Select Group Of Fellow Economists, That Conclusion Has Had No Practical Impact… Else There Would Have Been No Central Bank Of Sweden To Have Established The Award [nobel Prize] I Am Honoured To Receive.

Inflation Is The One Form Of Taxation That Can Be Imposed Without Legislation.

I Want People To Take Thought About Their Condition And To Recognize That The Maintenance Of A Free Society Is A Very Difficult And Complicated Thing And It Requires A Self-denying Ordinance Of The Most Extreme Kind

The Great Virtue Of Free Enterprise Is That It Forces Existing Businesses To Meet The Test Of The Market Continuously, To Produce Products That Meet Consumer Demands At Lowest Cost, Or Else Be Driven From The Market. It Is A Profit-and-loss System. Naturally, Existing Businesses Generally Prefer To Keep Out Competitors In Other Ways. That Is Why The Business Community, Despite Its Rhetoric, Has So Often Been A Major Enemy Of Truly Free Enterprise.

There Is Likely To Be A Lag Between The Need For Action And Government ["an Individual's" Or "a Team's"] Recognition Of The Need; A Further Lag Between Recognition Of The Need For Action And The Taking Of Action; And A Still Further Lag Between The Action And Its Effects

The Central Banks Cannot Control Interest Rates. That's A Mistake. They Can Control A Particular Rate, Such As The Federal Funds Rate, If They Want To, But They Can't Control Interest Rates.

You Had A Flood Of Immigrants, Millions Of Them, Coming To This Country. What Brought Them Here? It Was The Hope For A Better Life For Them And Their Children. And, In The Main, They Succeeded. It Is Hard To Find Any Century In History, In Which So Large A Number Of People Experience So Great An Improvement In The Conditions Of Their Life, In The Opportunities Open To Them, As In The Period Of The 19th And Early 20th Century.

There Is Not A Line In 'the Wealth Of Nations' That Is Not Still Applicable To This Day.

The Word 'free' Is Used Three Times In The Declaration Of Independence And Once In The First Amendment To The Constitution, Along With 'freedom.' The Word 'fair' Is Not Used In Either Of Our Founding Documents.

If The Us Government Spends 40 Percent Of The Nation's Income, As It Does Through Either Borrowing Or Taxes, That Income Is Not Available For People To Spend. The Deficit Is An Indirect Method Of Taxation. Of Course, Politicians Prefer To Borrow Instead Of Tax Because Then Someone Down The Road Has To Deal With The Consequences.

No Major Institution In The Us Has So Poor A Record Of Performance Over So Long A Period As The Federal Reserve, Yet So High A Public Reputation.

Few Trends Could So Thoroughly Undermine The Very Foundations Of Our Free Society As The Acceptance By Corporate Officials Of A Social Responsibility Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible.

Cutting Government Spending And Government Intrusion In The Economy Will Almost Surely Involve Immediate Gain For The Many, Short-term Pain For The Few, And Long-term Gain For All.

China Has Seen A Great Deal Of Economic Progress. It's Certainly Rather Of A Miracle. The Growing Role Of The Market In The Economy Will Force China To Open Up Its Political System Over Time And To Move Toward A More Democratic Society. So Taken As A Whole, The One Real Failure In This Whole Business Has Been Russia.

I Have Long Been A Critic Of Social Security, Basically Because I Believe That It Is Not The Business Of Government To Tell People What Fraction Of Their Incomes They Should Devote To Providing For Their Own Or Someone Else's Old Age.

If A Tax Cut Increases Government Revenues, You Haven't Cut Taxes Enough.

That's An Interesting Paradox To Think About. Make It Legal And It's No Good. Why? Because As Long As It's Illegal The People Who Come In Do Not Qualify For Welfare, They Don't Qualify For Social Security, They Don't Qualify For The Other Myriad Of Benefits That We Pour Out From Our Left Pocket To Our Right Pocket. So Long As They Don't Qualify They Migrate To Jobs. They Take Jobs That Most Residents Of This Country Are Unwilling To Take. They Provide Employers With The Kind Of Workers That They Cannot Get. They're Hard Workers, They're Good Workers, And They Are Clearly Better Off.

Politicians Will Always Spend Every Penny Of Tax Raised And Whatever Else They Can Get Away With.

With Some Notable Exceptions, Businessmen Favor Free Enterprise In General But Are Opposed To It When It Comes To Themselves.

All Of The Progress That The Us Has Made Over The Last Couple Of Centuries Has Come From Unemployment. It Has Come From Figuring Out How To Produce More Goods With Fewer Workers, Thereby Releasing Labor To Be More Productive In Other Areas. It Has Never Come About Through Permanent Unemployment, But Temporary Unemployment, In The Process Of Shifting People From One Area To Another.

If Instead Of Looking At Income, You Look At Levels Of Consumption, If Anything That's Become More Equal. The Fraction Of Families That Have A Dishwasher, That Have A Sewing Machine, That Have A Television Set. In Respect To Consumption, It's Very Hard To Avoid The View That People Have Been Getting More Equal Rather Than More Unequal.

I Am Myself Persuaded, On The Basis Of Extensive Study Of The Historical Evidence, That... The Severity Of Each Of The Contractions - 1920-21, 1929-33, And 1937-38 - Is Directly Attributable To Acts Of Commission And Omission By The Reserve Authorities And Would Not Have Occurred Under Earlier Monetary And Banking Arrangements.

What Does It Mean To Say That Government Might Have A Responsibility? Government Can't Have A Responsibility Any More Than The Business Can. The Only Entities Which Can Have Responsibilities Are People.

The Black Market Was A Way Of Getting Around Government Controls. It Was A Way Of Enabling The Free Market To Work. It Was A Way Of Opening Up, Enabling People.

Government Has Three Primary Functions. It Should Provide For Military Defense Of The Nation. It Should Enforce Contracts Between Individuals. It Should Protect Citizens From Crimes Against Themselves Or Their Property. When Government-- In Pursuit Of Good Intentions Tries To Rearrange The Economy, Legislate Morality, Or Help Special Interests, The Cost Come In Inefficiency, Lack Of Motivation, And Loss Of Freedom. Government Should Be A Referee, Not An Active Player.

Columbus Did Not Seek A New Route To The Indies In Response To A Majority Directive.

Fundamentally, There Are Only Two Ways Of Coordinating The Economic Activities Of Millions. One Is Central Direction Involving The Use Of Coercion - The Technique Of The Army And Of The Modern Totalitarian State. The Other Is Voluntary Cooperation Of Individuals - The Technique Of The Marketplace.

I Think A Major Reason Why Intellectuals Tend To Move Towards Collectivism Is That The Collectivist Answer Is A Simple One. If There's Something Wrong, Pass A Law And Do Something About It.

Socialism, In The Traditional Sense, Meant Government Ownership And Operation Of The Means Of Production. Outside Of North Korea And A Couple Of Other Spots, No One In The World Today Would Define Socialism That Way. That Will Never Come Back.

What Would The People Who Sold Us Goods Do With The Money? They'd Get Dollars. What Would They Do With The Dollars? Eat Them?!

If You Do Not Force Political Freedom, Economic Freedom Will Be Stymied Sooner Or Later.

There Is No Other Complex Field In Our Society In Which Do-it-yourself Beats Out Factory Production Or Market Production. Nobody Makes His Or Her Own Car. But It Is Still The Case That Parents Can Perform The Job Of Educating Their Children [homeschooling], In Many Cases Better Than Our Present Education System.

I'm Not In Favor Of No Government. You Do Need A Government. But By Doing So Many Things That The Government Has No Business Doing, It Cannot Do Those Things Which It Alone Can Do Well. There's No Other Institution In My Opinion That Can Provide Us With Protection Of Our Life And Liberty. However, The Government Performs That Basic Function Poorly Today, Precisely Because It Is Devoting Too Much Of Its Efforts And Spending Too Much Of Our Income On Things Which Are Harmful. So I Have No Doubt That That's The Major Single Problem We Face.

Only A Crisis—actual Or Perceived—produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around.

The Preservation Of Liberty, Not The Promotion Of Efficiency, Is The Primary Justification For Private Property. Efficiency Is A Happy, Though Not Accidental, By-product - And A Most Important By-product Because Liberty Could Not Have Survived If It Had Not Also Produced Affluence.

There's A Smokestack On The Back Of Every Government Program.

Government Programs

Look, For Example, At The Obvious, Immediate, Practical Example Of Illegal Mexican Immigration. Now, That Mexican Immigration, Over The Border, Is A Good Thing. It's A Good Thing For The Illegal Immigrants. It's A Good Thing For The United States. It's A Good Thing For The Citizens Of The Country. But, It's Only Good So Long As Its Illegal....

Viewed As A Means To The End Of Political Freedom, Economic Arrangements Are Important Because Of Their Effect On The Concentration Or Dispersion Of Power. The Kind Of Economic Organization That Provides Economic Freedom Directly, Namely, Competitive Capitalism, Also Promotes Political Freedom Because It Separates Economic Power From Political Power And In This Way Enables The One To Offset The Other

When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About How Much He Spends And How He Spends It. When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Someone Else, He Is Still Very Careful About How Much He Spends, But Somewhat Less What He Spends It On. When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About What He Buys, But Doesn't Care At All How Much He Spends. And When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money On Someone Else, He Does't Care How Much He Spends Or What He Spends It On. And That's Government For You.

Is There Some Society You Know Of That Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think Russia Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think China Doesn't Run On Greed? What Is Greed?

Anything That Government Can Do, Private Enterprise Can Do For Half The Cost.

I Can Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else. And If I Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else, I'm Not Concerned About How Much It Is, And I'm Not Concerned About What I Get. And That's Government. And That's Close To 40 Percent Of Our National Income.

Consider Social Security. The Young Have Always Contributed To The Support Of The Old. Earlier, The Young Helped Their Own Parents Out Of A Sense Of Love And Duty. They Now Contribute To The Support Of Someone Else's Parents Out Of Compulsion And Fear. The Voluntary Transfers Strengthened The Bonds Of The Family; The Compulsory Transfers Weaken Those Bonds.

The Problem Is That, In A World Of Floating Exchange Rates, As Italy Was Before The Euro, If One Country Is Subjected To A Shock Which Requires It To Cut Wages, It Cannot Do So With A Modern Kind Of Control And Regulation System. It Is Much Easier To Do It By Letting The Exchange Rate Change. Only One Price Has To Change, Instead Of Many.

For Example, The Supporters Of Tariffs Treat It As Self-evident That The Creation Of Jobs Is A Desirable End, In And Of Itself, Regardless Of What The Persons Employed Do. That Is Clearly Wrong. If All We Want Are Jobs, We Can Create Any Number--for Example, Have People Dig Holes And Then Fill Them Up Again, Or Perform Other Useless Tasks. Work Is Sometimes Its Own Reward. Mostly, However, It Is The Price We Pay To Get The Things We Want. Our Real Objective Is Not Just Jobs But Productive Jobs--jobs That Will Mean More Goods And Services To Consume.

So Long As Large Sums Of Money Are Involved - And They Are Bound To Be If Drugs Are Illegal - It Is Literally Impossible To Stop The Traffic, Or Even To Make A Serious Reduction In Its Scope.

How Can Thinking People Believe That A Government That Cannot Deliver The Mail Can Deliver Gas Better Than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, And The Rest?

On Aging Societies, There Is No Reason Why A Country That Has A Lot Of Old People Can't Be Prosperous If, During Their Working Lives, Individuals Provide For Their Retirement.

I Say Thank God For Government Waste. If Government Is Doing Bad Things, It's Only The Waste That Prevents The Harm From Being Greater.

The Case Against A Fully Independent Central Bank Is Strong Indeed.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

A Minimum-wage Law Is, In Reality, A Law That Makes It Illegal For An Employer To Hire A Person With Limited Skills.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them... He Recognizes No National Goal Except As It Is The Consensus Of The Goals That The Citizens Severally Serve. He Recognizes No National Purpose Except As It Is The Consensus Of The Purposes For Which The Citizens Severally Strive.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Ecological Crisis

It Is A Mark Of How Far We Have Gone On The Road To Serfdom That Government Allocation And Rationing Of Oil Is The Automatic Response To The Oil Crisis.

Because We Live In A Largely Free Society, We Tend To Forget How Limited Is The Span Of Time And The Part Of The Globe For Which There Has Ever Been Anything Like Political Freedom: The Typical State Of Mankind Is Tyranny, Servitude, And Misery.

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Money Losing Value.

I Think Almost Every Economist Would Agree That Government Gets Itself In Trouble When It Tries To Interfere With Voluntary Behavior.

Why Have We Had Such A Decline In Moral Climate? I Submit To You That A Major Factor Has Been A Change In The Philosophy Which Has Been Dominant, A Change From Belief In Individual Responsibility To Belief In Social Responsibility. If You Adopt The View That A Man Is Not Responsible For His Own Behavior, That Somehow Society Is Responsible, Why Should He Seek To Make His Behavior Good?

Plato Assumes Somehow That Government Is A Way In Which You Put Unselfish And Ungreedy Men In Charge Of Selfish And Greedy Men. But Government Is An Institution Whereby The People Who Have The Greatest Drive To Get Power Over Their Fellow Men, Get In A Position Of Controlling Them. Look At The Record Of Government. Where Are These Philosopher Kings That Plato Supposedly Was Trying To Develop?

The Internet Moves Us Closer To "perfect Information" On Markets. Individuals And Companies Alike Can Buy And Sell Across Borders And Jurisdictions Wherever They Find The Best Match Of Supply And Demand.

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

I Believe The Role That People Like Myself Have Played In The Transformation Of Public Opinion Has Been By Persistently Presenting A Different Point Of View, A Point Of View Which Stresses The Importance Of Private Markets, Of Individual Freedom, And The Distorting Effect Of Governmental Policy.

Saying It Is One Thing. Doing It Is Very Different.

World Trade Depends On Differences Among Countries, Not Similarities. Different Countries Are In Different Stages Of Development. It Is Appropriate For Them To Have Different Patterns, Different Policies For Ecology, Labor Standards, And So Forth.

Significant Changes In The Growth Rate Of Money Supply, Even Small Ones, Impact The Financial Markets First. Then, They Impact Changes In The Real Economy, Usually In Six To Nine Months, But In A Range Of Three To 18 Months. Usually In About Two Years In The Us, They Correlate With Changes In The Rate Of Inflation Or Deflation." "the Leads Are Long And Variable, Though The More Inflation A Society Has Experienced, History Shows, The Shorter The Time Lead Will Be Between A Change In Money Supply Growth And The Subsequent Change In Inflation.

Significant Change

You Never Have Real Changes Unless You Have A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

Because It Is One Thing To Have Free Immigration To Jobs. It Is Another Thing To Have Free Immigration To Welfare. And You Cannot Have Both. If You Have A Welfare State, If You Have A State In Which Every Resident Is Promises A Certain Minimal Level Of Income, Or A Minimum Level Of Subsistence, Regardless Of Whether He Works Or Not, Produces It Or Not. Then It Really Is An Impossible Thing.

Impossible Things

The Major Basis For My Opposition To Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Been How Badly It's Worked, The Fact That It's Produced Much More Harm Than Good - It Has Been Primarily A Moral Reason: I Don't Think The State Has Any More Right To Tell Me What To Put Into My Mouth Than It Has To Tell Me What Can Come Out Of My Mouth.

If You Continue To Use Monetary Policy To Attempt To Promote Full Employment The Result Would Be That You Would Have Higher Inflation, And That You Would Not Have Lower Unemployment.

The Proper Role Of Government Is Exactly What John Stuart Mill Said In The Middle Of The 19th Century In "on Liberty." The Proper Role Of Government Is To Prevent Other People From Harming An Individual. Government, He Said, Never Has Any Right To Interfere With An Individual For That Individual's Own Good.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them.

The Current Oil Crisis Has Not Been Produced By The Oil Companies. It Is A Result Of Governmental Mismanagement Exacerbated By The Mideast War.

The Fed Was Largely Responsible For Converting What Might Have Been A Garden-variety Recession, Although Perhaps A Fairly Severe One, Into A Major Catastrophe. Instead Of Using Its Powers To Offset The Depression, It Presided Over A Decline In The Quantity Of Money By One-third From 1929 To 1933 ... Far From The Depression Being A Failure Of The Free-enterprise System, It Was A Tragic Failure Of Government.

Government Power Must Be Dispersed. If Government Is To Exercise Power, Better In The County Than In The State, Better In The State Than In Washington. If I Do Not Like What My Local Community Does, Be It In Sewage Disposal, Or Zoning, Or Schools, I Can Move To Another Local Community, And Though Few May Take This Step, The Mere Possibility Acts As A Check. If I Do Not Like What Washington Imposes, I Have Few Alternatives In This World Of Jealous Nations.

My Interest In Political Philosophy Was Rather Casual Until I Met Hayek.

Undoubtedly Internet Has Reduced The Possibilities Of Taxation. Why Should I Buy Something Here If I Can Buy It From A Company In Japan Or England Or Brazil With A Lower Tax?

A Real Gold Standard Is Thoroughly Consistent With [classical] Liberal Principles And I, For One, Am Entirely In Favor Of Measures Promoting Its Development.

The Important Issue Is Not How Much Inequality There Is But How Much Opportunity There Is For Individuals To Get Out Of The Bottom Classes And Into The Top. If There Is Enough Movement Upward, People Will Accept The Efficiency Of The Markets. If You Have Opportunity, There Is A Great Tolerance For Inequality. That Has Been The Saving Grace Of The American System.

Now That I'm 60, Every Morning I Look In The Mirror And Say, "i Don't Know Who You Are, Stranger, But I'm Gonna Shave You Anyway".

Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

If, For Example, Existing Government Intervention Is Minor, We Shall Attach A Smaller Weight To The Negative Effect Of Additional Government Intervention. This Is An Important Reason Why Many Earlier Liberals, Like Henry Simons, Writing At A Time When Government Was Small By Today's Standards, Were Willing To Have Government Undertake Activities That Today's Liberals Would Not Accept Now That Government Has Become So Overgrown.

I Want People To Take Thought About Their Condition And To Recognize That The Maintainence Of A Free Society Is A Very Difficult And Complicated Thing And It Requires A Self-denying Ordinance Of The Most Extreme Kind. It Requires A Willingness To Put Up With Temporary Evils On The Basis Of The Subtle And Sophisticated Understanding That If You Step In To Do Something About Them You Not Only May Make Them Worse, You Will Spread Your Tenticles And Get Bad Results Elsewhere.

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Really Demonstrated Beyond The Shadow Of A Doubt That There Was A Bad System, And What Subsequently Happened In The Soviet Union, That That System Was A Failure.

If Freedom Were Not So Economically Efficient It Certainly Wouldn't Stand A Chance.

The Essential Notion Of A Capitalist Society ... Is Voluntary Cooperation, Voluntary Exchange. The Essential Notion Of A Socialist Society Is Force.

Richard Nixon Was A Very Intelligent And Able Man. And He Had The Right Ideas. But He Did Not Have The Adherence To Principles That [ronald] Reagan Had. He Did Some Very Good Things. We Owe To Richard Nixon The Volunteer Army - He Got Rid Of The Draft. And That Was A Major Increase In Freedom.

The Power To Determine The Quantity Of Money... Is Too Important, Too Pervasive, To Be Exercised By A Few People, However Public-spirited, If There Is Any Feasible Alternative. There Is No Need For Such Arbitrary Power... Any System Which Gives So Much Power And So Much Discretion To A Few Men, [so] That Mistakes - Excusable Or Not - Can Have Such Far Reaching Effects, Is A Bad System. It Is A Bad System To Believers In Freedom Just Because It Gives A Few Men Such Power Without Any Effective Check By The Body Politic - This Is The Key Political Argument Against An Independent Central Bank.

There Is No Place For Government To Prohibit Consumers From Buying Products The Effect Of Which Will Be To Harm Themselves.

They Think That The Cure To Big Government Is To Have Bigger Government... The Only Effective Cure Is To Reduce The Scope Of Government - Get Government Out Of The Business.

Freedom In Economic Arrangements Is Itself A Component Of Freedom Broadly Understood, So Economic Freedom Is An End In Itself ... Economic Freedom Is Also An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

He Moves Fastest Who Moves Alone.

I Think It's A Scandal What Has Been Happening In The School System So Far As Lower Income Classes. The Dropout Rates, The Illiteracy Rate, You Know Literacy In The United States Was A Lot Higher In 1890 Than It Is Now.

Our Minds Tell Us, And History Confirms, That The Great Threat To Freedom Is The Concentration Of Power. Government Is Necessary To Preserve Our Freedom, It Is An Instrument Through Which We Can Exercise Our Freedom; Yet By Concentrating Power In Political Hands, It Is Also A Threat To Freedom. Even Though The Men Who Wield This Power Initially Be Of Good Will And Even Though They Be Not Corrupted By The Power They Exercise, The Power Will Both Attract And Form Men Of A Different Stamp.

The Facts Never Speak For Themselves. They Have To Be Interpreted In Terms Of Some Understanding Of Where They Come From And What The Relation Between Them Is.

...theories Should Be Judged By Their Ability To Predict Events Rather Than By The Realism Of Their Assumptions.

Positive Economics Is In Principle Independent Of Any Particular Ethical Position Or Normative Judgment...in Short, Positive Economics Is Or Can Be An "objective" Science.

Political Freedom Means The Absence Of Coercion Of A Man By His Fellow Men. The Fundamental Threat To Freedom Is Power To Coerce, Be It In The Hands Of A Monarch, A Dictator, An Oligarchy, Or A Momentary Majority. The Preservation Of Freedom Requires The Elimination Of Such Concentration Of Power To The Fullest Possible Extent And The Dispersal And Distribution Of Whatever Power Cannot Be Eliminated — A System Of Checks And Balances.

The Internet Is The Most Effective Instrument We Have For Globalization.

When A Private Enterprise Fails, It Is Closed Down; When A Government Enterprise Fails, It Is Expanded. Isn't That Exactly What's Been Happening With Drugs?

If The Only Motive Was To Help People Who Could Not Afford Education, Advocates Of Government Involvement Would Have Simply Proposed Tuition Subsidies.

Keynes Was A Great Economist. In Every Discipline, Progress Comes From People Who Make Hypotheses, Most Of Which Turn Out To Be Wrong, But All Of Which Ultimately Point To The Right Answer. Now Keynes, In 'the General Theory Of Employment, Interest And Money,' Set Forth A Hypothesis Which Was A Beautiful One, And It Really Altered The Shape Of Economics. But It Turned Out That It Was A Wrong Hypothesis. That Doesn't Mean That He Wasn't A Great Man!

The Combination Of Economic And Political Power In The Same Hands Is A Sure Recipe For Tyranny.

The Way You Solve Things Is By Making It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing.

Humility Is The Distinguishing Virtue Of The Believer In Freedom; Arrogance, Of The Paternalist.

The Problem In This World Is To Avoid Concentration Of Power - We Must Have A Dispersion Of Power.

Economics Has Become Increasingly An Arcane Branch Of Mathematics Rather Than Dealing With Real Economic Problems.

Prohibition Is An Attempted Cure That Makes Matters Worse - For Both The Addict And The Rest Of Us.

Germany Has A Very Able And Productive Workforce. It Has High-quality Products That Are Valued All Over The World. It Has Every Opportunity To Be A Productive, Growing State. It Just Has To Give Its Entrepreneurs A Chance. It Has To Let Them Make Money, Hire And Fire, And Act Like Entrepreneurs.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them. He Is Proud Of A Common Heritage And Loyal To Common Traditions. But He Regards Government As A Means, An Instrumentality, Neither A Grantor Of Favors And Gifts, Nor A Master Or God To Be Blindly Worshipped And Served.

Trending Author

Candace Cameron

Ginnifer Goodwin

Category