Letters to the Editor
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Occam's barber shop
After what I have witnessed in the past six years I would say the best reason not to trust the ideas of Mr. Friedman is that American conservatives do.
However, Democrats would be well served to become familiar with the man's work. Mr. Friedman provided the only reply necessary to the Republican's age old label for the Democrats as the party of "Tax and Spend."
As Mr. Friedman knew, when it comes to tending our flock the Democrat's "Tax and Spend" is a morally, ethically and economically superior choice to that of the Republican's preference for "Spend and Tax."
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Friedman Also Hated All But The Rich
It is clearly possible to lay some of the blame for both the Silverado/S&L scam and the Enron bust-out at Friedman's feet. Certainly, they are the logical extreme of putting several of his theories into practice, such as "structured finance".
Further, Friedman clearly endorsed a position that crime is good for society because it is more "efficient" (as a matter of Economics) than crime prevention and regulation.
Certainly, Friedman thought that it should be legal for corporate insiders to capitalize on (pun intended) their unfair advantage over outsiders by engaging in illegal "insider trading".
It may also be possible to lay much of the blame for Iraq at Friedman's feet:
"There is no doubt that the destruction of Iraq’s governmental infrastructure is the exact outcome the Neocons in the Bush administration sought, because they also sought to privatize as much of the Iraqi infrastructure as possible.
Iraq was to be the petri dish of the Neocon experiment to prove privatized infrastructure was a better alternative to governmental oversight of a nation’s infrastructure. It needs also to be mentioned that the corporate clients of the Bush cabal were to profit handsomely from the privatization of Iraq’s infrastructure.
That the cultural divisions of the Iraqi population were ignored is a testament to the self centered arrogance of the Neocons, they simply couldn’t envision any other outcome to their plans than their chosen outcome."
It is also important to note, as does Barry Schwartz, in his "The Paradox of Choice", that "constantly being asked to make choices, even about the simplest things, forces us to 'invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, and dread.' There comes a point, he contends, at which choice becomes debilitating rather than liberating. Did I make the right choice? Can I ever make the right choice?" We normally assume in America that more options ("easy fit" or "relaxed fit"?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.
Many of Friedman's "suggestions for reform" are GOP platform line-items that serve the hidden agenda of gutting America's national security interests. This is especially true of his "school voucher" program that will deprive America the Nation of millions of intelligent citizens of the Republic who are qualified to vote based on an understanding of national issues that goes beyond the superficial jingoism doled out at Friedman's "voucher schools", which are, in reality, nothing more than the segregation academies of the Massive Resisters.
So, as globalization (i.e. transnational corporatism) subsumes democracy, it becomes clear that Friedman was ever more of an apologist for profiteers and criminals than a major economic thinker.
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the only way that the empirical evidence supports the view that govts aren't really needed
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.
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We've secretly replaced your Salon article with a thinkpiece from the Wall Street Journal. Let's watch.
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.
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Oh, the drug war
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.
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Can You Imagine Friedman Thinking up the Bretton Woods Agreement?
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.
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I'm just saying
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.
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A true thinker
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.