I haven't seriously studied Friedman since I was an undergrad at SMU where I majored in economics and I have no personal knowledge what, if anything, he wrote on the subject. The SUM economics department was heavily laced with Chicago school profs, however, so I can perhaps make an educated guess on how you can reconcile a Chicago school belief with a moral view on global warming.

Those who pollute and cause global warming are imposing external costs on the rest of society. I think it is consistent with at least some brands of free market economics to acknowledge that one of the legitimate roles of government is to internalize external costs. The Coase theorem (named after Ronald Coase who certainly fits in the Chicago mold) suggests that absent transaction costs, it makes not difference who we place the burden on to pay the external costs, that the parties will nevertheless negotiate the most efficient outcome. Of course, in the real world there are transactions costs, so you cannot ignore them. Therefore an enlightened Chicago school disciple who believes that the government should internalize external costs would look and see which party has the lowest transactions costs to fix the problems. Here that is the party creating the pollution. Therefore, one would adopt regulations having that person mitigate the deleterious effects of their polluting activity.

However, I do suspect that rather than mandating a specific method of mitigation, a Chicago school solution would allow the polluter to choose from a range of mitigation options (e.g. quit polluting, install pollution reducing equipment, buy out another polluting firm, plant a million trees, buy a rain forest and protect it from being cut down, etc.).

An interesting issue that you raise, and one that has, I suspect, been written on more thoroughly and more thoughtfully that I have done here. But quite interesting.

I realize that this essay is partly encomium, not a broad critique of Friedman, and I also realize that I am not the equal of Brad DeLong in my understanding of economics. Nevertheless, in the current climate of an often uncritical yet passionate libertarianism, it seems necessary to point out that libertarian freedom fails on many accounts to ensure fairness. While an individual with an aggressive temperament and an astute talent for bargaining can often prevail in a free market, there is no guarantee that same person will make a good citizen or a particularly welcome neighbor.

Friedman may well have had the nimble mind necessary to sidestep the inherent failures of libertarianism in forging a working society, but his work is often used as a bludgeon to dislodge the underpinnings of the commonwealth. He often seemed to be willing to sacrifice real people's interests for a constricted and merciless ideology, and our society is reeling from the blows it has taken in the name of the free trade he advocated.

Was Friedman as strong a humanitartian as he was an interlocutor? Did he love his fellows as much as his ideas? Did he leave the world better and not just more efficient at moving markets? These seem to be the questions that remain in assessing his accomplishments, and I would be very interested in knowing what the answers are.

Whoever wrote on health care in canada clearly has never tried to make a doctors's appointment in canada. The canadian/univeral health care system can be as problematic as our own. This is not to say that we as country should not provide health care to those who cannot afford it, but rather think harder about a better system. If there is something to be learned from Delong's article on Friedman, is that we all need to be more pragrmatic. Hopefully politicians on both aisles can learn from their economists and tackle problems not with pure idealogy but rather from a hope to find something that works.

You've ignored the part where Friedman stresses the importance of checking in with reality. The danger comes from those who don't allow reality to test their beliefs, convictions and trust (like the fundamentalist and the Bush administration).

It's a scary world if belief and trust are now dirty words.

Because the market's response was to hire a bunch of people to muddy the waters and deliberately delay action on it. Global warming has been a theory at least since the 1970's, and a near-total scientific consensus since 1995.

If this was one of those instances where government should have intervened, Friedman should have spoken up.

In fact, I'll take that a step further, from the specific to the general: If you are widely considered the "father of a movement" and prominent people like Reagan and Thatcher are publicly invoking your name to support their own policies, and if you think those policies are not what you meant or intended, you have an obligation to speak up. To his credit, Francis Fukuyama has had the intellectual honesty to come forward and say that the neoconservative lunacy now being practiced is not what he had in mind.

Friedman was silent.

How does the free market deal about global warming? How does the free market deal with the destruction of fisheries, the destruction of biodiversity, the depletion of irreplacable fossil fuels and the erosion of topsoil--all cases where those who pay the price (i.e. people in the future) are not those who reap the benefits.

That his worldview was easily adapted to suit the ends of selfish, antisocial people and institutions is not necessarily his fault. (Though it seems like an obvious outcome to me.) But the fact that he stood by, apparently without objection, as they were so appropriated is certainly an abrogation of his responsibility as an intellectual.

In one paragraph, Mr. DeLong uses three words which betray that which drove (inspirited?) Mr. Friedman.

"His worldview began with a bedrock belief.....

a trust in free markets....

on top of that was layered a powerful conviction...."

'Trust', 'conviction' & 'belief' are keywords and

hallmarks (or warning signs) of the ideologue.

That said...and in substantial but incomplete disagreement with Mr Friedman's thesis...I would wonder if much of economic theory is actually just belief system.

IF that is true, we need more data and less 'religion'...

And will then find actual enlightenment & economic truth.