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If We Have System In Which Government Is In A Position To Give Large Favor - It's Human Nature To Try To Get This Favor - Whether Those People Are Large Enterprises, Or Whether They're Small Businesses Like Farmers, Or Whether They're Representatives Of Any Other Special Group. The Only Way To Prevent That Is To Force Them To Engage In Competition One With The Other.

-Milton Friedman

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If We Have System

Milton Friedman

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If We Have System In Which Government Is In A Position To Give Large Favor - It's Human Nature To Try To Get This Favor - Whether Those People Are Large Enterprises, Or Whether They're Small Businesses Like Farmers, Or Whether They're Representatives Of Any Other Special Group. The Only Way To Prevent That Is To Force Them To Engage In Competition One With The Other.

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The Power To Do Good Is Also The Power To Do Harm.

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.

A Society That Puts Equality Before Freedom Will Get Neither. A Society That Puts Freedom Before Equality Will Get A High Degree Of Both.

I Think There Is Universal Agreement Within The Economics Profession That The Decline - The Sharp Decline In The Quantity Of Money Played A Very Major Role In Producing The Great Depression.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Times Of Crisis

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....

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.

There Is No Good Way Of Measuring Poverty.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

You Cannot Be Sure That You Are Right Unless You Understand The Arguments Against Your Views Better Than Your Opponents Do.

In A Bureaucratic System, Useless Work Drives Out Useful Work.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

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

Making Prohibition Work Is Like Making Water Run Uphill; It's Against Nature.

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.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

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.

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

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.

You Can Travel From One End Of The Industrialized World To The Other And Almost The Only People You Will Find Engaging In Backbreaking Toil Are People Who Are Doing It For Sport. To Find People Whose Day's Toil Has Not Been Lightened By Mechanical Invention, You Must Go To The Non-capitalist World.

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.

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

I Am In Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible. ... Because I Believe The Big Problem Is Not Taxes, The Big Problem Is Spending.

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 Difference Between Me And People Like Murray Rothbard Is That, Though I Want To Know What My Ideal Is, I Think I Also Have To Be Willing To Discuss Changes That Are Less Than Ideal So Long As They Point Me In That Direction.

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?

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

Corruption Is Government Intrusion Into Market Efficiencies In The Form Of Regulations.

Market Efficiency

No Central Banker Would Disagree With The Proposition That Inflation Is Primarily A Monetary Phenomenon. Not One Of Them Will Disagree That Every Inflation Has Been Accompanied By A Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money And Every Deflation By A Decline In The Quantity Of Money.

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.

There Is One And Only One Responsibility Of Business: To Use Its Resources And Engage In Activities Designed To Increase Its Profits So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game.

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. And The Thing That I Will Really Be Proud Of Is If Some Of The Work I Have Done Is Still Cited In The Text Books Long After I Am Gone.

. . . 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.

The Long-range Sloution To High Unemployment Is To Increase The Incentive For Ordinary People To Save, Invest, Work, And Employ Others. We Make It Costly For Employers To Employ People; We Subsidize People Not To Go To Work We Have A System That Increasingly Taxes Work And Subsidizes Nonwork.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Benefits Of A Tariff Are Visible. Union Workers Can See They Are "protected". The Harm Which A Tariff Does Is Invisible. It's Spread Widely. There Are People That Don't Have Jobs Because Of Tariffs But They Don't Know It.

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.

The Existence Of A Free Market Does Not Of Course Eliminate The Need For Government. On The Contrary, Government Is Essential Both As A Forum For Determining The "rule Of The Game" And As An Umpire To Interpret And Enforce The Rules Decided On.

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

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

Free Enterprise

There's No Way To Avoid A Burden On Your Freedom. The Costs Themselves Are A Burden On Your Freedom. The Restrictions That Are Necessary In Order To Get Rid Of The Terrorists Are A Burden To Your Freedom. So There's No Way In The Short Run To Avoid A Restriction On Your Freedom.

In The Us, The Problem Is Primary And Secondary Education. We've Had Such An Increase In Inequality Because A Quarter Of American Kids Don't Finish High School!

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

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

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!

Congress Can Raise Taxes Because It Can Persuade A Sizable Fraction Of The Populace That Somebody Else Will Pay

He Moves Fastest Who Moves Alone.

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 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 Euro Is Good For Europe. But Only If There Is Flexibility All Around.

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.

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.

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

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

One Of The Great Mistakes Is To Judge Policies And Programs By Their Intentions Rather Than Their Results.

The Rule Of Law Does Not Guarantee Freedom, Since General Law As Well As Personal Edicts Can Be Tyrannical. But Increasing Reliance On The Rule Of Law Clearly Played A Major Role In Transforming Western Society From A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Was Literally Subject To The Arbitrary Will Of His Master To A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Could Regard Himself As His Own Master

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.

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.

I Am A Limited-government Libertarian.

Limited Government

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.

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?

I Believe That The Monetary Stability Is An Absolutely Critical Element In The Satisfactory Operation Of A System.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible.

Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

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

How Did We Make The Transition From Using Wood To Using Coal, From Using Coal To Using Oil, From Using Oil To Using Natural Gas? How In God's Name Did We Make That Transition Without A Federal Energy Agency?

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.

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

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.

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.

Had Drugs Been Decriminalized, Crack Would Never Have Been Invented And There Would Today Be Fewer Addicts... The Ghettos Would Not Be Drug-and-crime-infested No-man's Lands... Colombia, Bolivia And Peru Would Not Be Suffering From Narco-terror, And We Would Not Be Distorting Our Foreign Policy Because Of It.

A Free Society Releases The Energies And Abilities Of People To Pursue Their Own Objectives. It Prevents Some People From Arbitrarily Suppressing Others. It Does Not Prevent Some People From Achieving Positions Of Privilege, But So Long As Freedom Is Maintained, It Prevents Those Positions Of Privilege From Becoming Institutionalized; They Are Subject To Continued Attack By Other Able, Ambitious People.

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

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

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.

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.

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

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

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.

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.

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.

Inflation Is A Monetary Phenomenon. It Is Made By Or Stopped By The Central Bank.

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.

Since The 1930s The Technique Of Buying Votes With The Voters' Own Money Has Been Expanded To An Extent Undreamed Of By Earlier Politicians.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

The Great Achievements Of Civilization Have Not Come From Government Bureaus.

Americans Know Very Little About Social Statistics, But I Am Not Sure That It's Important That Americans Know About Social Statistics.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Doing Good With Other People's Money Has Two Basic Flaws. In The First Place, You Never Spend Anybody Else's Money As Carefully As You Spend Your Own. So A Large Fraction Of That Money Is Inevitably Wasted. In The Second Place, And Equally Important, You Cannot Do Good With Other People's Money Unless You First Get The Money Away From Them. So That Force - Sending A Policeman To Take The Money From Somebody's Pocket - Is Fundamentally At The Basis Of The Philosophy Of The Welfare State.

The Most Important Single Central Fact About A Free Market Is That No Exchange Takes Place Unless Both Parties Benefit.

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.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

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.

Unfortunately, Unanimity Is Not Always Feasible.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

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

When Something Goes Wrong, The Natural Tendency Is To Say, "by God, We Need To Pass A Law And Do Something."

Freedom Is A Rare And Delicate Plant. Our Minds Tell Us, And History Confirms, That The Great Threat To Freedom Is The Concentration Of Power.

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?

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.

There Have Been Unions Based On Gold Or Silver, But Not On Fiat Money - Money Tempted To Inflate - Put Out By Politically Independent Entities.

Universities Exist To Transmit Knowledge And Understanding Of Ideas And Values To Students Not To Provide Entertainment For Spectators Or Employment For Athletes.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I Am Convinced That The Minimum-wage Law Is The Most Anti-negro Law On Our Statute Books In Its Effect, Not Its Intent.

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.

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

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.

Statistics Do Not Speak For Themselves.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Speeches By Businessmen On Social Responsibility...may Gain Them Kudos In The Short Run. But It Helps To Strengthen The Already Too Prevalent View That The Pursuit Of Profits Is Wicked.... There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business-to...engage In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

My Major Problem With The World Is A Problem Of Scarcity In The Midst Of Plenty ... Of People Starving While There Are Unused Resources ... People Having Skills Which Are Not Being Used.

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

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.

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.

China's Productive System Draws Upon The Other East Asian Countries To A Great Extent. The Volume Of Trade Is Much Larger Than The Net Amount Being Exported From China. China Needs Substantial Reserves To Finance All That.

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.

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

We Do Not Influence The Course Of Events By Persuading People That We Are Right When We Make What They Regard As Radical Proposals. Rather, We Exert Influence By Keeping Options Available When Something Has To Be Done At A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

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.

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?

The Only Relevant Test Of The Validity Of A Hypothesis Is Comparison Of Prediction With Experience.

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.

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 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

If You Cannot State A Proposition Clearly And Unambiguously, You Do Not Understand It.

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.

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.

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.

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

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

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

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.

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

Economy And Economics

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.

Economic Freedom Is An Essential Requisite For Political Freedom. By Enabling People To Cooperate With One Another Without Coercion Or Central Direction, It Reduces The Area Over Which Political Power Is Exercised.

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

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The One Thing That’s Missing, But That Will Soon Be Developed, Is A Reliable E-cash, A Method Whereby On The Internet You Can Transfer Funds From A To B, Without A Knowing B Or B Knowing A.

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.

[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.

When You Start Paying People To Be Poor, You Wind Up With An Awful Lot Of Poor People.

The Founding Fathers Envisioned A Federal Government That Trusts Its People With Their Money And Freedom, Outlining This Limited, Non-intrusive Federal Government In...the Constitution, Leaving The Other Powers To People...or To The States.

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