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I Think That Nothing Is So Important For Freedom As Recognizing In The Law Each Individual’s Natural Right To Property, And Giving Individuals A Sense That They Own Something That They’re Responsible For, That They Have Control Over, And That They Can Dispose Of.

-Milton Friedman

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I Think That Nothing

Milton Friedman

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I Think That Nothing Is So Important For Freedom As Recognizing In The Law Each Individual’s Natural Right To Property, And Giving Individuals A Sense That They Own Something That They’re Responsible For, That They Have Control Over, And That They Can Dispose Of.

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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.

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

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.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

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.

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

To The Best Of My Knowledge, There Has Never Been A Monetary Union, Putting Out A Fiat Currency, Composed Of Independent States.

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

When You Have A Time Of Crisis What Happens Depends On What Ideas Are Floating Around, And What Ideas Have Been Developed, And Thought Through, And Are Made Effective.

Times Of Crisis

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

As A Nation, We Have Been Responsible For The Murder Of Literally Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Home And Abroad By Fighting A War That Should Never Have Been Started And Can Be Won, If At All, Only By Converting The United States Into A Police State.

Germany's Problem, In Part, Is That It Went Into The Euro At The Wrong Exchange Rate That Overvalued The Deutsche Mark.

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.

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.

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

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.

There's No Point In Comparing An Actual, Operating System With An Ideal System That Doesn't Exist.

Operating Systems

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

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.

There Are Severe Limits To The Good That The Government Can Do For The Economy, But There Are Almost No Limits To The Harm It Can Do.

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.

. . I Think The Adam Smith Role Was Played In This Cycle I.e. The Late Twentieth Century Collapse Of Socialism In Which The Idea Of Free-markets Succeeded First, And Then Special Events Catalyzed A Complete Change Of Socio-political Policy In Countries Around The World By Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom.

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

[trade Licensing] Almost Inevitably Becomes A Tool In The Hands Of A Special Producer Group To Maintain A Monopoly Position At The Expense Of The Rest Of The Public. There Is No Way To Avoid This Result.

The Future Of Private Enterprise Capitalism Is Also The Future Of A Free Society. There Is No Possibility Of Having A Politically Free Society Unless The Major Part Of Its Economic Resources Are Operated Under A Capitalistic Private Enterprise System.

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

I Cannot Disagree With You That Having Something Like 500 Economists Is Extremely Unhealthy. As You Say, It Is Not Conducive To Independent, Objective Research. You And I Know There Has Been Censorship Of The Material Published. Equally Important, The Location Of The Economists In The Federal Reserve Has Had A Significant Influence On The Kind Of Research They Do, Biasing That Research Toward Noncontroversial Technical Papers On Method As Opposed To Substantive Papers On Policy And Results

Spending By Government Currently Amounts To About 45 Percent Of National Income. By That Test, Government Owns 45 Percent Of The Means Of Production That Produce The National Income. The U.s. Is Now 45 Percent Socialist.

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Did More For The Progress Of Freedom Than All Of The Books Written By Myself Or Friedrich Hayek Or Others.

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

The Evidence Of History Speaks With A Single Voice. I Do Not Know Any Exception To The Proposition That If You Compare Like With Like, The Freer The System, The Better Off The Ordinary Poor People Have Been.

Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

The Great Depression Was Not A Sign Of The Failure Of Monetary Policy Or A Result Of The Failure Of The Market System As Was Widely Interpreted. It Was Instead A Consequence Of A Very Serious Government Failure, In Particular A Failure In The Monetary Authorities To Do What They'd Initially Been Set Up To Do.

Great Depression

What Happened Was That For Every $100 Of Money, By Which I Mean The Cash That People Keep In Their Pockets, And The Deposits They Have In The Bank, For Every $100 Of Money That There Was In 1929, By 1933 There Was Only $67. The Federal Reserve Allowed The Quantity Of Money To Decline By A Third. While, At All Times, It Had The Possibilities And The Power Of Preventing That From Happening.

The Great Depression In The United States Was Caused - I Won't Say Caused, Was Enormously Intensified And Made Far Worse Than It Would Have Been By Bad Monetary Policy.

Great Depression

In This Day And Age, We Need To Revise The Old Saying To Read, "hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

Hell Hath No Fury

John Lott Documents How Far 'politically Correct' Vested Interests Are Willing To Go To Denigrate Anyone Who Dares Disagree With Them. Lott Has Done Us All A Service By His Thorough, Thoughtful Scholarly Approach To A Highly Controversial Issue.

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.

People Who Intend Only To Seek Their Own Benefit Are “led By An Invisible Hand To Serve A Public Interest Which Was No Part Of” Their Intention. I Say That There Is A Reverse Invisible Hand: People Who Intend To Serve Only The Public Interest Are Led By An Invisible Hand To Serve Private Interests Which Was No Part Of Their Intention.

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.

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.

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.

One Of The Reasons That I Am In Favor Of Less Government Is Because When You Have More Government, Industrialists Take It Over.

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.

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 High Rate Of Unemployment Among Teenagers, And Especially Black Teenagers, Is Both A Scandal And A Serious Source Of Social Unrest. Yet It Is Largely A Result Of Minimum Wage Laws. We Regard The Minimum Wage Law As One Of The Most, If Not The Most, Anti-black Laws On The Statute Books.

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.

When You Argue For Free Markets, You Are Arguing Against The Trend.

Political Leaders In Capitalist Countries Who Cheer The Collapse Of Socialism In Other Countries Continue To Favor Socialist Solutions In Their Own. They Know The Words, But They Have Not Learned The Tune.

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

It's A Moral Problem That The Government Is Making Into Criminals People, Who May Be Doing Something You And I Don't Approve Of, But Who Are Doing Something That Hurts Nobody Else.

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.

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own.

Economy And Economics

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.

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.

There Is No Logical Basis For The Prohibition Of Marijuana. $7.7 Billion Is A Lot Of Money, But That Is One Of The Lesser Evils. Our Failure To Successfully Enforce These Laws Is Responsible For The Deaths Of Thousands Of People In Colombia. I Haven't Even Included The Harm To Young People. It's Absolutely Disgraceful To Think Of Picking Up A 22-year-old For Smoking Pot. More Disgraceful Is The Denial Of Marijuana For Medical Purposes.

If You Have Free Immigration, In The Way We Had It Before 1914, Everybody Benefited. The People Who Were Here Benefited. The People Who Came Benefited. Because Nobody Would Come Unless He, Or His Family, Thought He Would Do Better Here Than He Would Elsewhere. And, The New Immigrants Provided Additional Resources, Provided Additional Possibilities For The People Already Here. So Everybody Can Mutually Benefit.

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

Every Economist Knows That Minimum Wages Either Do Nothing Or Cause Inflation And Unemployment. That's Not A Statement, It's A Definition.

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.

History Suggests That Capitalism Is A Necessary Condition For Political Freedom. Clearly It Is Not A Sufficient Condition.

Unfortunately, Unanimity Is Not Always Feasible.

Personal Freedom Has Grown Greatly Within China, And That Will Provoke Ever More Points Of Conflict Between The Individual And State.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

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.

If China Don't Free Up The Political Side, Its Economic Growth Will Come To An End - While It Is Still At A Very Low Level.

Whenever You Try To Do Good With Someone Else's Money, You Are Committed To Using Force. How Can You Do Good With Somebody Else's Money, Unless You First Take It Away From Them? The Only Way You Can Take It Away From Them Is The Threat Of Force: You Have A Policeman, Tax Collector, Who Comes And Takes It From Them.

Self-interest Is Not Myopic Selfishness. It Is Whatever It Is That Interests The Participants, Whatever They Value, Whatever Goals They Pursue. The Scientist Seeking To Advance The Frontiers Of His Discipline, The Missionary Seeking To Convert Infidels To The True Faith, The Philanthropist Seeking To Bring Comfort To The Needy - All Are Pursuing Their Interests, As They See Them, As They Judge Them By Their Own Values.

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.

In A Free Society, It Is Hard For 'good' People To Do 'good', But That Is A Small Price To Pay For Making It Hard For 'evil' People To Do 'evil', Especially Since One Man's Good Is Another's Evil

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

It All Would Have Been Much Better If Individuals Saved For Their Own Old Age.

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

The Stock Market Crashed In October 1929. But That Was Not The Cause Of What Caused The Great Depression. It Was, In My Opinion, A Very Minor Element Of It. What Happened Was That From 1929 To 1933 You Had A Major Contraction Which, In My Opinion, Was Caused Primarily By The Failure Of The Federal Reserve System, To Follow The Course Of Action For Which It Was Set Up. It Was Set Up To Prevent Exactly What Happened From 1929 To 1933. But Instead Of Preventing It, They Facilitated It.

Money Is A Very Powerful Thing, Which You Hardly Notice When It Goes Right, But Which Can Create Havoc When It Goes Wrong.

Adam Smith's Key Insight Was That Both Parties To An Exchange Can Benefit And That, So Long As Cooperation Is Strictly Voluntary, No Exchange Can Take Place Unless Both Parties Do Benefit.

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

The Use Of Quantity Of Money As A Target Has Not Been A Success. I'm Not Sure That I Would As Of Today Push It As Hard As I Once Did.

George Stigler Was A Delightful Correspondent. In A Letter From London In 1948, After Remarking On The Inconvertibility Of The Pound And The Inedible, Still-rationed Food, He Concluded, "so Here I Am Losing Weight And Gaining Pounds.

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 Corporate Social Responsibility A Company Has Is To Maximize Its Profits.

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 Big Issue Is Whether The United States Will Succeed In Its Venture Of Reshaping The Middle East. It Is Not Clear To Me That Using Military Force Is The Way To Do It. We Should Not Have Gone Into Iraq. But We Have.

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

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.

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.

Hong Kong Is The Bellwether. If The Chinese Stick To Their Agreement To Let Hong Kong Go Its Own Path, Then China Will Also Go That Way. If They Don't, That Is A Very Bad Sign. I'm Optimistic.

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

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

The Economic Miracle That Has Been The United States Was Not Produced By Socialized Enterprises, By Government-unon-industry Cartels Or By Centralized Economic Planning. It Was Produced By Private Enterprises In A Profit-and-loss System. And Losses Were At Least As Important In Weeding Out Failures, As Profits In Fostering Successes. Let Government Succor Failures, And We Shall Be Headed For Stagnation And Decline.

And What Does Reward Virtue? You Think The Communist Commissar Rewards Virtue? You Think A Hitler Rewards Virtue? You Think, Excuse Me, If You'll Pardon Me, American Presidents Reward Virtue? Do They Choose Their Appointees On The Basis Of The Virtue Of The People Appointed Or On The Basis Of Their Political Clout?

The Great Depression, Like Most Other Periods Of Severe Unemployment, Was Produced By Government Mismanagement Rather Than By Any Inherent Instability Of The Private Economy.

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

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

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.

Every Person Shall Be Free To Do Good ' At His Own Expense.

Germany Cannot Get Out Of The Euro. What It Has To Do, Therefore, Is Make The Economy More Flexible - To Eliminate The Restrictions On Prices, On Wages And On Employment; In Short, The Regulations That Keep 10 Percent Of The German Workforce Unemployed.

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

Times Of Crisis

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.

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.

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

The Real Tragedy Of Minimum Wage Laws Is That They Are Supported By Well-meaning Groups Who Want To Reduce Poverty. But The People Who Are Hurt Most By Higher Minimums Are The Most Poverty Stricken.

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.

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

You Know There Are Very Few Marxists Left In The World... They're All In American Universities.

The Invisible Hand In Politics Operates In The Opposite Direction To The Invisible Hand In The Market.

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.

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....

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

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?

The Strongest Argument For Free Enterprise Is That It Prevents Anybody From Having Too Much Power. Whether That Person Is A Government Official, A Trade Union Official, Or A Business Executive. If Forces Them To Put Up Or Shut Up. They Either Have To Deliver The Goods, Produce Something That People Are Willing To Pay For, Are Willing To Buy, Or Else They Have To Go Into A Different Business.

Government Is A Way By Which Every Individual Believes He Can Live At The Expense Of Everybody Else.

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

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.

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.

Individual Price And Wage Changes Will Not Be Prevented. In The Main, Price Changes Will Simply Be Concealed By Taking The Form Of Changes In Discounts, Service, And Quality, And Wage Changes, In Overtime, Perquisites And So On…. But To Whatever Extent The Freeze Is Enforced, It Will Do Harm By Distorting Relative Prices.

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.

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.

A Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country.

The Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country. He Will Ask Rather 'what Can I And My Compatriots Do Through Government' To Help Us Discharge Our Individual Responsibilities, To Achieve Our Several Goals And Purposes, And Above All, To Protect Our Freedom?

I Think That Nothing Is So Important For Freedom As Recognizing In The Law Each Individual’s Natural Right To Property, And Giving Individuals A Sense That They Own Something That They’re Responsible For, That They Have Control Over, And That They Can Dispose Of.

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?

In Response To A Suggestion That Total Free Trade Would End In Cheaper Foreign Products Flooding The Market And Causing Unemployment.

There Is No Figure Who Had More Of An Influence, No Person Had More Of An Influence On The Intellectuals Behind The Iron Curtain Than Friedrich Hayek. His Books Were Translated And Published By The Underground And Black Market Editions, Read Widely, And Undoubtedly Influenced The Climate Of Opinion That Ultimately Brought About The Collapse Of The Soviet Union.

The Depression, Which Started In 1929 Was Rather Mild From 1929 To 1930. And, Indeed, In My Opinion Would Have Been Over In 1931 At The Latest Had It Not Been That The Federal Reserve Followed A Policy Which Led To Bank Failures, Widespread Bank Failures, And Led To A Reduction In The Quantity Of Money.

Federal Reserve

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

Free Enterprise

Higher Taxes Never Reduce The Deficit. Governments Spend Whatever They Take In And Then Whatever They Can Get Away With.

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

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.

What Makes It [economics] Most Fascinating Is That Its Fundamental Principles Are So Simple That They Can Be Written On One Page, That Anyone Can Understand Them, And Yet Very Few Do.

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?!

I Am A Libertarian With A Small "l" And A Republican With A Capital "r". And I Am A Republican With A Capital "r" On Grounds Of Expediency, Not On Principle.

So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game, Which Is To Say, Engages In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

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

The State Of Our Educational System Is A Disgrace To Our Country. We Have An Elementary And Secondary School System In Which Close To Half Of The Youngsters Never Graduate Properly. It's A Disgrace That There Is More Illiteracy Today Than There Was 100 Years Ago.

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

The Heart Of The Liberal Philosophy Is A Belief In The Dignity Of The Individual, In His Freedom To Make The Most Of His Capacities And Opportunities According To His Own Lights.

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.

So The Question Is, Do Corporate Executives, Provided They Stay Within The Law, Have Responsibilities In Their Business Activities Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible? And My Answer To That Is, No They Do Not.

. . . It Is Worth Discussing Radical Changes, Not In The Expectation That They Will Be Adopted Promptly But For Two Other Reasons. One Is To Construct An Ideal Goal, So That Incremental Changes Can Be Judged By Whether They Move The Institutional Structure Toward Or Away From That Ideal. The Other Reason Is Very Different. It Is So That If A Crisis Requiring Or Facilitating Radical Change Does Arise, Alternatives Will Be Available That Have Been Carefully Developed And Fully Explored.

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.

Every Friend Of Freedom... Must Be As Revolted As I Am By The Prospect Of Turning The United States Into An Armed Camp, By The Vision Of Jails Filled With Casual Drug Users And Of An Army Of Enforcers Empowered To Invade The Liberty Of Citizens On Slight Evidence.

With Respect To Teachers' Salaries .... Poor Teachers Are Grossly Overpaid And Good Teachers Grossly Underpaid. Salary Schedules Tend To Be Uniform And Determined Far More By Seniority.

There's Nothing That Does So Much Harm As Good Intentions.

The Great Virtue Of A Free Market System Is That It Does Not Care What Color People Are; It Does Not Care What Their Religion Is; It Only Cares Whether They Can Produce Something You Want To Buy. It Is The Most Effective System We Have Discovered To Enable People Who Hate One Another To Deal With One Another And Help One Another.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every Businessman Is In Favor Of Freedom For Everybody Else, But When It Comes To Himself That's A Different Question. He's Always The Special Case. He Ought To Get Special Privileges From The Government, A Tariff, This, That And The Other Thing.

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 Great Advances Of Civilization, Whether In Architecture Or Painting, In Science Or Literature, In Industry Or Agriculture, Have Never Come From Centralized Government.

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".

It Is True That A Competitive Market Is Not The Whole Of Society. A Great Deal Depends On The Qualities Of The Population And The Nation In How They Organize The Non-market Aspects Of Society.

You Could Not Possibly Maintain The Current Level Of Government Taxation Without The Taxes Being Hidden, And They Are Hidden In Two Very Different Ways. They Are Hidden Through Withholding, But They Are Also Hidden By Being Imposed On Business, Supposedly On Business, When Really, Of Course, Business Can't Pay Taxes, Only People Can Pay Taxes.

I Think That The Internet Is Going To Be One Of The Major Forces For Reducing The Role Of Government.

Most Of The Energy Of Political Work Is Devoted To Correcting The Effects Of Mismanagement Of Government.

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.

We Had Much Freer Trade In The 19th Century. We Have Much Less Globalization Now Than We Did Then.

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.

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?

Legalizing Drugs Would Simultaneously Reduce The Amount Of Crime And Raise The Quality Of Law Enforcement. Can You Conceive Of Any Other Measure That Would Accomplish So Much To Promote Law And Order?

You Will Find That Hardly A Soul Who Will Say That It Was A Bad Thing. Almost Everybody Will Say It Was A Good Thing. 'but What About Today? Do You Think We Should Have Free Immigration?' 'oh, No,' They'll Say, 'we Couldn't Possibly Have Free Immigration Today. Why, That Would Flood Us With Immigrants From India, And God Knows Where. We'd Be Driven Down To A Bare Subsistence Level.'

The Broader And More Influential Organisations Of Businessmen Have Acted To Undermine The Basic Foundation Of The Free Market System They Purport To Represent And Defend.

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

Government Programs

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

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

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

To Really Understand Something You've Got To Reduce It To Its Principles.

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

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

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.

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.

And Where Are You Going To Get These Angels Who Are Going To Run Society For Us?

I Start ... From A Belief In Individual Freedom And That Derives Fundamentally From A Belief In The Limitations Of Our Knowledge, From A Belief ... That Nobody Can Be Sure That What He Believes Is Right, Is Really Right ... I'm An Imperfect Human Being Who Cannot Be Certain Of Anything, So What Position ... Involved The Least Intolerance On My Part? ... The Most Attractive Position ... Is Putting Individual Freedom First.

So That The Record Of History Is Absolutely Crystal Clear That There Is No Alternative Way, So Far Discovered, Of Improving The Lot Of The Ordinary People That Can Hold A Candle To The Productive Activities That Are Unleashed By A Free-enterprise System.

A Society That Puts Equality - In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome - Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Or Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom. On The Other Hand, A Society That Puts Freedom First Will, As A Happy By-product, End Up With Both Greater Freedom And Greater Equality. Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Less Well Off To Become Tomorrow's Rich, And In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Richer And Fuller Life.

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

Economic Freedom Is ... An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

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.

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

Pick At Random Any Three Letters From The Alphabet, Put Them In Any Order, And You Will Have An Acronym Designating A Federal Agency We Can Do Without.

I'm In Favor Of Legalizing Drugs. According To My Values System, If People Want To Kill Themselves, They Have Every Right To Do So. Most Of The Harm That Comes From Drugs Is Because They Are Illegal.

Now Here's Somebody Who Wants To Smoke A Marijuana Cigarette. If He's Caught, He Goes To Jail. Now Is That Moral? Is That Proper? I Think It's Absolutely Disgraceful That Our Government, Supposed To Be Our Government, Should Be In The Position Of Converting People Who Are Not Harming Others Into Criminals, Of Destroying Their Lives, Putting Them In Jail. That's The Issue To Me. The Economic Issue Comes In Only For Explaining Why It Has Those Effects. But The Economic Reasons Are Not The Reasons.

You Never Can Cure Poverty. Poverty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder.

The World Runs On Individuals Pursuing Their Self Interests. The Great Achievements Of Civilization Have Not Come From Government Bureaus. Einstein Didn't Construct His Theory Under Order From A Bureaucrat. Henry Ford Didn't Revolutionize The Automobile Industry That Way.

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.

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.

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.

If You Look At The Balance Sheet, The Us Is Heavily In Debt. If You Look At The Income Account - The Amount Of Interest The Us Pays Abroad - It Is Almost Exactly Equal To The Amount Of Interest That It Receives From Abroad. American Assets Held Abroad Are Earning A Higher Rate Of Return Than Foreign Assets Held Here.

It Is My View That What Is Important Is Cutting Government Spending, However Spending Is Financed. A So-called Deficit Is A Disguised And Hidden Form Of Taxation. The Real Burden On The Public Is What Government Spends (and Mandates Others To Spend). As I Have Said Repeatedly, I Would Rather Have Government Spend One Trillion Dollars With A Deficit Of A Half A Trillion Than Have Government Spend Two Trillion Dollars With No Deficit.

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 Argument For Collectivism Is Simple; Free Market Is Not.

Central Bankers Always Try To Avoid Their Last Big Mistake. So Every Time There's The Threat Of A Contraction In The Economy, They'll Over Stimulate The Economy, By Printing Too Much Money. The Result Will Be A Rising Roller Coaster Of Inflation, With Each High And Low Being Higher Than The Preceding One.

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