"The concept of freedom, though it appears in the title of the book, is not analyzed. The commonplace idea that poverty is in many ways a restriction of personal freedom is not even mentioned. Implicitly, there are several not completely compatible strands in the Friedmans' analysis. As the title suggests, the Friedmans' advocate an emotional libertarianism. No action is valid which is not the outcome of voluntary action and agreement, the argument made, for example, by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This position does not rest on economic efficiency at all. Still, the Friedmans' training as economists cannot be shed so easily. Economic progress matters a good deal to them, and economic success is a major argument for laissez-faire. They are also aware that economic theory shows that the market cannot always be successful in achieving efficiency, for there are externalities, such as pollution, with which it does not deal."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from New York CityAgnostics from the United StatesEconomists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Kenneth Arrow, "Review of Free to Choose", New Republic, 177 (1980): 18-28.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Milton Friedman
1912 – 2006
US-amerikanischer Ökonom und Nobelpreisträger
216 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Milton Friedman →
Related Quotes
"Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is 'volu…"
"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more r…"
"The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of s…"
"I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I'm right and he is wrong."
"Over the period covered by these data, a drastic change has occurred in the responsibilities undertaken by the state …"
"I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm f…"
"The price system works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. We never realize how we…"
"A largely parallel example involving human behavior has been used elsewhere by Savage and me. Consider the problem of…"
"If we are to use effectively these abstract models and this descriptive material, we must have a comparable explorati…"
"Make politics an avocation, not a vocation."