Milton Friedman has died at the age of ninety four. Others will list the vast number of honours that he achieved in his life time and will speak of him as a husband, father and friend.
I remember Milton Friedman from my youth via the mainstream media, because he belonged to a time when it was still possible (although difficult) for a free market thinker to have large scale exposure in the mainstream media. I remember the interviews, I remember the television series (Free to Choose – and the book of the same name being in every bookshop and library in the land), and I remember the articles in Newsweek magazine.
Milton Friedman replaced Henry Hazlitt, but he was given an article only every two weeks (Hazlitt had a weekly spot), These days of course it would be almost unthinkable for a free market thinker to be given such space in a main stream magazine – and it is not really a question of modern free market folk being inferior writers to Professor Friedman (it is the message that is no longer tolerated, not a higher standard of writing that is demanded).
If ‘conservative’ voices are heard in the mainstream media it is more likely to be voices like that of President Bush who was speaking today (in Singapore) – the normal confusion of ‘freedom’ with ‘democracy’ and the normal promises of aid from the Western taxpayer to various governments in return for these governments ‘investing in people’ (“schools ‘n’ hospitals” and the rest of the standard speech).
Milton Friedman refused to meet President Bush, perhaps this was intolerant of him (for all I have written above President Bush is not a bad man and he means well), but Professor Friedman’s argument was that as he had tried for eight years (during the Reagan Administration) to explain the basic concepts of liberty to George Herbert Walker Bush, to no effect, he was not going to waste what little remained of his life talking to the son.
As for Milton Friedman’s message I (and many others) could argue over many matters. Were “right to work” statutes (i.e. bans on the closed shop) really bad things (as Professor Friedman believed) or were they a counter weight to pro-union laws (as some of us political folk believed)? Was the ‘negative income tax’ really a good way to save people from poverty, or would it lead to people not working if they could not find a good job? Were education vouchers a way of combining freedom in education with support for poor parents, or would they corrupt private schools?
The arguments were endless, but they (by all accounts) tended to be debates conducted in a good spirit – and Milton Friedman always at least held his own in debates (against anyone). → Continue reading: Milton Friedman RIP
