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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
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.
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
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.
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
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.
I attended a wedding of the (then) chairman of the California Republican Party with my girlfriend. She had the unenviable job of spending the entire event with Dana Rohrbacher, since they were both in the wedding party.
I sat at a table at the reception dinner with one other person from Berkeley (as I was). and 10 raving conservatives. At one point I thought the woman sitting across from me was going to lunge for my throat and strangle me.
The argument that got her goat? I told her about my experiences in the machine control industry, how I like government regulations regarding safety since it freed us to focus on our expertise. Equipment made by other companies might have injured someone, but that the knowledge gained from an analysis of the situation was used to write a safety requirement that prevented that problem from happening again.
Her response? Employees should research on the internet to find out which companies use the dangerous machines and be sure not to work there.
I said I was happy to participate in a regulatory system that strove to prevent a little girl from finding out her dad was killed on the job by a careless company's machinery. The legs on her chair shot back as she stood up...and someone intervened as the speeches started.
The baby example is absurd beyond belief. Regulation is a means of spreading best practices. There are stupid regulations. There are useless ones. But they do serve the purpose of spreading information and allowing companies to focus on their core competencies.
If anyone wants a less fawning, less wishy washy, portrayal of where this scumbag's ideology leads, go read this article on counterpunch about friedman and chile -
http://www.counterpunch.org/grandin11172006.html
Milton Friedman was one of the most brilliant economists of all time, but the weakness of his thinking is emblematic of the weakness of economic thought in general: exaggerating a partial truth into a universal truth. Economics starts with the assumption that more is "better" than less, a value judgement that certainly is true in a general sense, but not universally so. Eating two slices of pizza may be "better" than one, but eating 1000 slices may not be "better" than 999.
Milton Friedman was a master at exaggerating the particular into the general. A perfect example is his attitude toward drug addiction. Freedom of choice was the only criterion for him, ignoring all evidence from the fields of psychology, sociology, medicine, and criminology (and I don't mean the study of crimes related to illegality).
Friedman's other great weakness was his assumption that markets alone would make a mass industrial system work for the betterment of all. He never questioned the very premise of this belief - that the mass industrial system is a given, a precondition, an imperative. Underlying his brilliance was a fundamental dishonesty, borne out by his and his disciples' support and assistance to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet of Chile.
I always found Milton Friedman suspect because of his smug cocksureness. Anyone that self-satisfied is masking something. In his case it was the hollowness of his thought. Like most intellectualls, he built a house of cards. He had a superior intellect and was a masterful polemicist, but his real genius was in the power of exaggeration.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
