that there's any discussion of raising memorials to him in Chile.

'The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.' - John Kenneth Galbraith

And Milton Friedman provided the blueprint.

That gives a little run-up time to September 11, 1973, so there wouldn't be a government of University of Chicago ("The university built on a hell-mouth!*") fascists pre-fabbed and ready to take over after the Nixonian fascists achieved their coup in Chile.

And people like him love government, as long as all its functions are punitive instead of positive, and as long as all of them benefit the rich and powerful. Now and again they'll rail against something like the pot laws. That they hate government is the Big Lie this misguided article feeds. They simply hate good government.

*http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle08022003.html

A quick look at the web site of the _post-autistic economics review_ (http://www.paecon.net) finds a page titled 'The Greatest 20th Century Economists Poll'.

Qualification is defined as:

"“Greatest” here means ... who most added to our understanding of economic phenomena ... Only subscribers to the post-autistic economics review are eligible to vote"

Friedman is off the back from #1 Keynes (3,253 votes) and well back from #4 Amartya Sen (708 votes) or #6 Thorstein Veblen (591 votes) - but he is #13, right behind Kenneth Arrow and well above Coase.

Friedman's theories are surely open to question on social and political grounds and the criticisms of the heterodox economists are cogent, but even they don't hold his thinking in contempt, just his conclusions.

He makes the point (a few pages back) that choice is bad...in fact debilitating. I suppose we should all just marry the first member of the opposite sex we meet to save ourselves all that time and energy of trying to find the right mate. It's hard for me to remember the last time I heard something that idiotic. I'd rather be FREE TO CHOOSE.

-Geof

I have to admit that when I got home yesterday and when hearing on the radio, first thing, that Milton Friedman was dead, I broke into a spontaneous (no, really) chorus of "Ding, dong the witch is dead."

For all the notes, postings, etc. that have been posted that spout about his love of personal freedom, there is a question that is buried in your essay. The first government to adopt Neo-Liberal economic policies, and the government he continued to advise, was Chile. That is, Pinochet's Chile. For all his arguing that true freedom is found in economic freedom (and he did write a large popular book that made just this argument), then how can he ever justify his direct involvement in one of the most oppressive governments in the western hemisphere.

This is not the place to argue with the many problems with his economic theories, though our current economic situation (with stagnant to falling real wages, disappearing manufacturing base, disappearing middle class) should at least be cause for pause. For further (and better than I can provide) economic arguments, I will point to the Post-Autistic economics movement (it's google-able, as it were). But this history of Chile should cause all of us to pause when reading yet another glowing tribute.

Milton was not afraid to use his intellect to serve the greater good rather than get lost in the liberal spinmasters web.

Lucklily countries far and wide are utilizing his mind even after his death.

Go look at Eastern europe, Ireland, etc and you will see his ideas benefiting the country as a whole and raising their standard of living.

Anyone who hold the view that "once enough babies had died the company would go bankrupt and the product [an unsafe crib] would be taken off the market" assumes your child won't be the one who dies from an unsafe product.

No, neither can I.

During the height of the Great Depression, the Governor of Michigan visited Roosevelt in the White House. He told Roosevelt that 100 people a week were found dead from starvation on the streets of Detroit. He begged Roosevelt to do something, anything, to help the people of his state. And Roosevelt did. Friedman? He would have carefully explained to the poor, deluded governor that markets fluctuate and that as long as markets are free they are eventually self-correcting.

At which point the distraught governor would have presumably pulled his pistol and blown out Friedman's dessicated brains.

We'd be better off taking a much more libertarian view of the drug "problem." But Friedman was not alone in taking this view. Sure, if you deny any role for government in any endeavor, every once in a while you'll be right.

Well, this is nice. Obviously we don't need to mention how Friedman's monetarist policy, once adopted by Reagan, Thatcher, Paul Volcker, etc., led to millions of people landing in unemployment? And that it was completely wrong from the get-go? Nah, I guess we're just going to have a fawning puffpiece. Well, okay.

Am I the only one who notices that the only people who seem to be interested in championing libertarianism are straight white guys who are ZOMG SO OPPRESSED by anything that refuses to acknowledge their dick as the center of the universe? Government should be, and can be, an instrument of good. It's the job of the voters and the civil servants alike to ensure that this happens as much as possible, rather than simply render it toothless and useless.

is if you ignore that massive amount of damage that is done to a huge percentage of the population due to the fact both that the market is so efficent at keeping wages down that lots of people can't earn a living and the fact that in a complex technological society every individual simply does not have the means of directly knowing all the relevant information needed to make truly informed economic decisons. An unregulated stock market will invariably become a scam and this principle applies to every complex system. A pure free market may work in a village of subsitence farmers exchanging homemade crafts goods. A corporate dictatorship is not a free market in any meaningful sense.