I see several people criticizing socialism in favor of the “free market system” promoted by Friedman.

Why the scare quotes? Are you saying that Friedman did not support free markets? What are you smoking?

I believe that Milton Friedman was the “rainmaker” for western capitalists. He consulted with some of the most murderous, abusive dictators of our time (Pinochet, Idi Amin, Mao) in an effort to open their borders to trade with western industrialists.

Your belief is mistaken. I am not aware that he “consulted” with such people, and certainly not Idi Amin. It is true that he advocated free markets around the world, and as a result, the situation in places such as Chile and China is a damn sight better today than it was during the heyday of say, Chairman Mao.

These dictators were highly compensated for their cooperation and death and destruction followed the footsteps of Milty.

Bullcrap.

While western governments (often with the aid of CIA and MI6) were knocking down doors to get to the resources of third world countries, they moved our countries more and more toward Socialism. That’s the irony of the whole Friedman concept. The country who promoted him as the Guru of economics (National Medal of Science, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Nobel Prize) used his economic platform to plunder sovereign countries resources through economic policy while, at the same time implementing progressively more socialist policies at home.

What is all this shit about “plundering” sovereign countries’ resources, pray? Are you saying that if a US firm builds a refinery in say, Nigeria, with the consent of the Nigerian government or whoever, that it is robbing good Nigerians of what is rightfully theirs? Sounds like you are indulging a protectionist, nationalist argument. Which does rather blunt your declared aim to be against socialism, which often goes hand in hand with nationalism.

U.S. citizens have lost their life savings, their homes, their spirit, and their jobs. ALL because of economic policies and monetary theory that Friedman promoted.

I thought Friedman was a man who warned of the dangers of boosting the money supply and the creation thereby of asset bubbles; yes, there are differences between the Chicago and Austrian schools of banking and finance but those differences are not very big.

I am afraid I find your comments to be totally incoherent.

Adolf Hitler – an ardent collectivist (the term “National Socialist” was not for show) see Ludwig Von Mises “Omnipotent Government” or F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”.

Only a minority of businessmen supported Hitler (see Turner’s “German Big Business and the rise of Hitler”) and those that did soon regreted it when he turned them into shop managers of their own enterprises (see Fritz Thysson’s [spelling] “I Paid Hitler). Endless rules and arbitary commands made them “owners” in only a notional sense.

If “rightwing” means “like Adolf Hitler”, Pinochet would have to be considered a leftwing person in his economic policy. Also there is the matter of killing millions of Jews and invading other countries.

At least the National Socialists sat on the right hand side of the German Parliament – to call the pro union popularist Batisita “rightwing” does not even have that excuse. Batista came to power in the sergeants revolution of 1932 (the government that was overturned was also interventionist – but it was not as bad as the new regime, it was also less corrupt than the new regime).

Batista ruled (on and off – and sometimes from behind the scenes) till 1959. To call him “right wing” only makes sense if one calls anyone who is not a card carrying member of the Communist party “rightwing” – in which case Allende was “rightwing” (as he was an independent Marxist – not a party member).

The Americans did fling money at Cuba at some points during the time of Batista – but they flung money at a lot of Progressive regimes (the old doctrine of President Wilson and F.D.R. – although F.D.R. added his normal cynical edge), but they gave up on Batista eventually – even though they were warned that Castro was pro Communist.

I have sometimes wondered whether Batista’s origins (he had some negro “blood”) caused him some problems with the Americans in the 1950′s.

The Americans (mainly “Social Gospel” types who had lost faith in God and had started to worship the government instead) started to force through international agreements on drugs after World War I – and Britain went along with these agreements.

Government “pensions” for the general population are Ponzi schemes – they are not based on productive investments, they are chain letters.

Saying that an effort to move to pensions that are based on real investments (although, sadly, a compulsory scheme) causes “problems” is like saying that using water on a house fire is a bad thing because it makes things wet.

Again there is a repeat of “copper nationalization” as if it was what the Allende government was about. Copper nationalization was put well under way under the Christian Democrat party administration of 1964 to 1970 (one that came to power, in part, because the Americans backed the Christian Democrats against the National party in the 1964 elections).

Allende and his allies were about the taking over of EVERYTHING (not just copper). How many times does this have to be pointed out before some people understand it?

And, of course, any resistance by property owners (or non property owners who wished to help property owners) would have been used as an excuse for mass extermination (the Marxists, of all the various factions, made that quite clear).

On Kim du Toit’s point.

Milton Friedman may have been wrong about many things but drugs were not one of the them.

Firstly the Federal government has no constitutional power to ban drugs. The 18th Amendment gave the Congress the power to ban booze (not other drugs) – and has been repealed (by the 21st Amendment) anyway. There has never been any drugs Constitutional Amdendment.

The “war on drugs” is only “constitutional” in the way that other government abuses (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so on) are “constitutional”. Either by pretending that the PURPOSE of the powers given to Congress “the common defence and general welfare” is somehow a “general welfare power” in-its-self or that “regulate interstate commerce” gives the Congress the power to ban certain forms of commerce (which is dubious – but supportable) and that it gives the Congress to the right to ban a commercial transaction that does not cross a State line (which is absurd – although upheld by various World War II Supreme Court judgements). Slavery is nothing to do with the above (both because it is covered by the 13th Amendment and because, as Salmon P. Chase was fond of pointing out, “slavery” is in fact just a series of common law offences anyway).

As for drug prohibition as policy (what Milton Friedman was really interested in).

There might be an antiliberatian argument for it if it worked (on the grounds that drug use leads to nasty consequences) – but it clearly does not work. Drugs are on sale within a block or two of the D.E.A. buidling in Washington D.C. – and every major police force in the United States has officers who are involved in the drug business in one way or another (either taking bribes or selling the stuff themselves).

Millions of people have been sent to prison, but who goes to prison is not really a matter of what they do – it is a matter of who they are. A drug user from a wealthy family is unlikely to go to prison.

The “puritanical” Victorians were not so stupid as to think they could prevent people using things that were bad for them by passing statutes against them (no such drug laws existed in the United Kingdom till after World War II).

If people wish to destroy their health with booze or other drugs that is their business. All prohibition does is hand over the profits of the drug trade to criminal organizations and vastly boost crime (as people seek to gain the money for the inflated prices they have to pay for black market drugs).

I am certainly not “pro drugs” or pro any vice. However, the idea that sins are crimes and can prevented by statutes is one of the great fallacies of our age.

Really the “Chicago boys” in Chile were Professor Arnold Harberger’s (not that I am saying that he supported rigged exchange rates – I have no idea what his opinion was) students (not Milton Friedman’s), but clearly expecting the left to do any research is expecting too much.

As for the 1975 visit to Chile. Milton Friedman also visited the People’s Republic of China in the same year (he delivered the same lecture- on inflation, how it is nothing to do with “exchange rates” or other such but is about the money supply).

In Chile Milton Friedman was a guest of a private foundation and in his one meeting with Augusto Pinochet and his letter to him made it clear that he opposed the idea of military government – yet there was a fire storm of attacks by students, academics and media people people in various parts of the world.

In China Milton Friedman was the official guest of the government of the greatest mass murderer of human history – Mao.

Mao was responsible for the deaths of many tens of millions of innocent people (even more than Stalin was), yet (as far as I know) the “liberal” elite in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand never attacked Milton Friedman for being his guest.

It would appear that the claimed concern of the elite with “human rights” is a total fraud.

1. Pinochet
2. Friedman
3. Thatcher
4. Bush

They don’t have any arguments that stand up to his actually theories. So throwing mud is so much easier.

I’ll join Gabriel….

“freedom is indivisible….” wonderful, laudable sentiment….

In practice freedom IS divisible, and in ALL societies there is some degree of freedom and some degree of coercion and nastiness. When faced with a real situation you examine it, and analyse to what degree it is free; in practice freedom isn’t an either/or case – either there is or there isn’t.

Freedom is indivisable. If you start ranking certain freedoms as being more or less important than any others, then I think one has a problem.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2006/12/why_are_so_many.html

To the barricades then.