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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.

-Milton Friedman

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There Is No Other

Milton Friedman

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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.

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[u]nemployment Is ... A Side Effect Of The Cure For Inflation.

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.

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.

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

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....

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 Unions Might Be Good For The People Who Are In The Unions But It Doesn't Do A Thing For The People Who Are Unemployed. Because The Union Keeps Down The Number Of Jobs, It Doesn't Do A Thing For Them.

Whenever We Depart From Voluntary Cooperation And Try To Do Good By Using Force, The Bad Moral Value Of Force Triumphs Over Good Intentions.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

"free Markets" Is A Very General Term. There Are All Sorts Of Problems That Will Emerge. Free Markets Work Best When The Transaction Between Two Individuals Affects Only Those Individuals. Most Often, A Transaction Between You And Me Affects A Third Party. That Is The Source Of All Problems For Government. That Is The Source Of All Pollution Problems, Of The Inequality Problem. This Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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 Excuse For The Destruction Of Liberty Is Always The Plea Of Necessary ' That There Is No Alternative

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.

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.

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?

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

Theories Can Be Based On Any Assumptions, However Bizarre.

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.

The Big Problem For A Democratic Government - Democrat With A Small "d" - Is How To Hold Down Government Spending.

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

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

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.

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.

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

We Measure Poverty By What I Believe Is A Very, Very Crude Concept. We Actually Measure Poverty By Trying To Get Some Kind Of An Estimate Of The Minimum Expenditures On Food That Are Required To Maintain Health, Multiplying That Number By Three, And Saying That's The Level Of Poverty. And It's A Very Crude, Inaccurate Arrangement.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Underlying Most Arguments Against The Free Market Is A Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

What Kind Of Society Isn't Structured On Greed?

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

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

Free Enterprise

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

Inflation Is Taxation Without Legislation.

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.

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.

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

There's Only One Thing That All Of The Central Banks Control And That Is The Base, Their Own Liability, And They Can Control That In Various Ways. They Can Control It Directly By Open Market Operations, Buying And Selling Government Securities Or Other Assets, For Example, Buying And Selling Gold, Or They Can Control It Indirectly By Altering The Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Depression In The United States, Far From Being A Sign Of The Inherent Instability Of The Private Enterprise System, Is A Testament To How Much Harm Can Be Done By Mistakes On The Part Of A Few Men When They Wield Vast Power Over The Monetary System Of The Country.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Believe There Is A Natural Resource Economics. I Believe There Is Good Economics And Bad Economics.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Most Unresolved Problem Of The Day Is Precisely The Problem That Concerned The Founders Of This Nation: How To Limit The Scope And Power Of Government. Tyranny, Restrictions On Human Freedom, Come Primarily From Governmental Restrictions That We Ourselves Have Set Up.

It Is Taken For Granted That Workers Should Receive Their Pay Partly In Kind, In The Form Of Medical Care Provided By The Employer. How Come? Why Single Out Medical Care? Surely Food Is No Less Essential To Life Than Medical Care. Why Is It Not At Least As Logical For Workers To Be Required To Buy Their Food At The Company Store As To Be Required To Buy Their Medical Care At The Company Store?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Great Danger To The Consumer Is The Monopoly -whether Private Or Governmental. His Most Effective Protection Is Free Competition At Home And Free Trade Throughout The World. The Consumer Is Protected From Being Exploited By One Seller By The Existence Of Another Seller From Whom He Can Buy And Who Is Eager To Sell To Him. Alternative Sources Of Supply Protect The Consumer Far More Effectively Than All The Ralph Naders Of The World.

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.

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.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

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

Our Emphasis Here Is Based Not Only On The Growing Seriousness Of Drug-related Crimes, But Also On The Belief That Relieving Our Police And Our Courts From Having To Fight Losing Battles Against Drug Use Will Enable Their Energies And Facilities To Be Devoted More Fully To Combating Other Forms Of Crime.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Know Of No Severe Depression, In Any Country Or Any Time, That Was Not Accompanied By A Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money, And Equally Of No Sharp Decline In The Stock Of Money That Was Not Accompanied By A Severe Depression.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

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.

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.

Complete Free Trade Is Not Politically Feasible. Why? Because It's Only In The General Interest And In No One's Special Interest.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business - To Use It Resources And Engage In Activities Designed To Increase Its Profits 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.

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