From “Which Way for Capitalism?,” by Milton Friedman, May 1978:
One meaning that is often attached to free enterprise is that enterprises shall be free to do what they want.…What we really mean is the freedom of individuals to set up enterprises. It is the freedom of an individual to engage in an activity so long as he uses only voluntary methods of getting other individuals to cooperate with him.
We talk about ourselves as a free enterprise society. Yet in terms of the fundamental question of who owns the means of production in the corporate sector we are 48 percent socialistic because the corporate tax is 48 percent.
I had a debate…with that great saint of the U.S. consumer, Ralph Nader. I posed the question of state laws requiring people who ride motorcycles to wear helmets.…That law is the best litmus paper to distinguish true believers in individualism…because the person riding the motorcycle is risking only his own life. He may be a fool to drive that motorcycle without a helmet, but part of freedom…is the freedom to be a fool.
Many people complain about government waste, but I welcome it…for two reasons. In the first place, efficiency is not a desirable thing if somebody is doing a bad thing.…Government is doing things that we don’t want it to do; so the more money it wastes, the better. In the second place, waste brings home to the public at large the fact that government is not an efficient and effective instrument for achieving its objectives. One of the great causes for hope is a growing disillusionment…with the idea that government is the all-wise, all-powerful big brother who can solve every problem that comes along.
When Gerald Ford became president and called a summit conference to do something about the problems of inflation…I sat at that summit conference and heard representatives of one group after another…and they all said the same things: “Of course, we recognize that in order to stop inflation we must cut down government spending. And I tell you, the way to cut down government spending is to spend more on me.” That was the universal refrain.
From “Where Are We on the Road to Liberty?,” by Milton Friedman, June 1987 (based on a speech Friedman gave at a Reason banquet in October 1986):
[Capitalism and Freedom] was a book directed at the
general public that was destined to sell more than 400,000 copies
in the next 18 years, written by an established professor at a
leading university and published by a leading university press. Yet
it was not reviewed in a single popular American publication.
There have been a few victories. We did, after all, get rid of the [Civil Aeronautics Board] that regulated the airlines. We did get rid of military conscription—that’s something truly to celebrate. But the improvement has been meager. The most one can say is that no major new spending programs have been passed in the last six years. The increase in government spending, outside the military, has been predominantly the effect of earlier programs.…I do not cite the contrast between the world of ideas and the world of practice as a reason for either dismay or pessimism; on the contrary…there always is and always has been a long lag between a change in the climate of opinion and a change in actual policy.
Why has there been so great a shift in the attitudes of the public [toward accepting free market ideas]? I’m sorry to confess that I do not believe it occurred because of the persuasive power of such books as Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom or Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or our own Capitalism and Freedom. Such books certainly played a role, but I believe the major reason for the change is the extraordinary force of factual evidence.…The great hopes that had been placed in Russia and China by the collectivists and socialists turned into ashes.…Similarly, the hopes that were placed in Fabian socialism and the welfare state in Britain or the New Deal in the United States were disappointed. One major government program after another started with the very best aims and with noble objectives and turned out not to deliver the goods.…Ideas played their part. But they played their part not by producing a reaction against the spread of government but by determining the form that that reaction took. The role we play as intellectuals is not to persuade anybody but to keep options open and to provide alternative policies that can be adopted when people decide they have to make a change.
From “The Best of Both Worlds,” June 1995, an interview
conducted by Brian Doherty:
Throughout my career, I spent most of my time on technical
economics.…If you really want to engage in policy activity, don’t
make that your vocation. Make it your avocation. Get a job. Get a
secure base of income. Otherwise, you’re going to get corrupted and
destroyed.…One of the most important things in my career is that I
always had a major vocation which was not policy. I don’t regard
what I’ve done in the field of monetary policy as on the same level
as what I’ve done about trying to get rid of the draft or
legalizing drugs.…But by having a good firm position in the
academic world, I was perfectly free to be my own person in the
world of policy. I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. I
didn’t have to worry about being persecuted.
I think you’ll make a mistake if you’re going to spend your life as a policy wonk. I’ve seen some of my students who have done this. And some of them are fine, and some of them, especially those who have gone to Washington and stayed, are not.
I am a Republican with a capital “R” and a libertarian with a small “l.” I have a party membership as a Republican, not because they have any principles, but because that’s the way I am the most useful and have most influence. My philosophy is clearly libertarian.
There are many varieties of libertarians. There’s a zero-government libertarian, an anarchist. There’s a limited-government libertarianism. They share a lot in terms of their fundamental values. If you trace them to their ultimate roots, they are different. It doesn’t matter in practice, because we both want to work in the same direction.
I would like to be a zero-government libertarian [but] I don’t
think it’s a feasible social structure. I look over history, and
outside of perhaps Iceland, where else can you find any historical
examples of that kind of a system developing?
From “Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business,” October
2005, a roundtable of essays featuring Friedman, Whole Foods CEO
John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J.
Rodgers:
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