Not merely an important intellectual and a persuasive pundit, Friedman was directly responsible for two enormous improvements in Americans’ everyday lives. Because of his work with the Nixon-era Gates Commission, which recommended the abolition of conscription, you can thank Friedman for eliminating the military draft. And because of his work on monetary theory, which convinced the Federal Reserve to keep a tighter rein on the growth of the money supply, you can thank him for the relatively low price inflation of the last two decades. In more recent years, he devoted his energies to two other libertarian causes, school choice and ending the prohibition of drugs. If those battles have not yet been won, we are much closer to victory than we would be without Friedman’s tireless advocacy.
Milton Friedman was also, to our great pleasure and benefit, a longtime contributor to Reason. From our January 1974 issue, where he enthusiastically agreed to be part of a registry of libertarian-friendly academics compiled by the early Reason staff, to his hour on the phone with me in late August 2006 to discuss Alan Greenspan’s record as chairman of the Federal Reserve and the prospects for his successor, Ben Bernanke, Friedman was always a generous friend to this magazine. He told me, during our interview published in the June 1995 issue, “I think that Reason magazine has been remarkably good; it has been very effective.” Not nearly as effective as he.
Here is a sampling of what Friedman offered in his many interviews and articles in Reason. It is meant to give a wide-angle picture of his thoughts—often iconoclastic and combative, always lucid and rooted in his belief that we should all be free to choose what we buy, what we sell, what we ingest, what we produce, how we interact with others, how we educate our children, and, in general, how we live.
From “An Interview With Milton Friedman,” December 1974, conducted by Tibor Machan, Joe Cobb, and Ralph Raico:
The case for free enterprise,
for competition, is that it’s the only system that will
keep the capitalists from having too much power. There’s
the old saying, “If you want to catch a thief, set a
thief to catch him.” The virtue of free enterprise
capitalism is that it sets one businessman against
another and it’s a most effective device for control.
I start…from a belief in individual freedom and that
derives fundamentally from a belief in the limitations
of our knowledge, from a belief…that nobody can be sure
that what he believes is right, is really right.…I’m an
imperfect human being who cannot be certain of anything,
so what position…involved the least intolerance on my
part?…The most attractive position…is putting individual
freedom first.
There’s a great deal of basis for believing that a free
society is fundamentally unstable—we may regret this but
we’ve got to face up to the facts.…I think it’s the
utmost of naiveté to suppose that a free society is
somehow the natural order of things.
It’s fortunate that the capitalist society is more
productive, because if it were not it would never be
tolerated. The bias against it is so great that…it’s got
to have a five-to-one advantage in order to survive.
I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move
towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is
a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and
do something about it.
I do believe that every individual should be free to
own, buy, and sell gold. If under those circumstances a
private gold standard emerged, fine—although I make a
scientific prediction that it’s very unlikely. But I
think those people who say they believe in a gold
standard are fundamentally being very anti-libertarian
because what they mean by a gold standard is a
governmentally fixed price for gold.
At one time I thought a strong argument could be made
for compulsory schooling because of the harm which the
failure to school your child does to other people.…But
the work which Ed West and others have done on the
actual development of schools makes it abundantly clear
that in the absence of compulsory schooling there would
nonetheless be a very high degree of literacy—that
self-interest would be sufficient to yield a degree of
schooling which would satisfy the social need for a
literate society. Consequently, I am no longer in favor
of compulsory schooling.
The two chief enemies of the free society or free
enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and
businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every
intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s
opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to
be a central planning board that will establish social
priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every
businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else,
but when it comes to himself that’s a different
question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get
special privileges from the government, a tariff, this,
that, and the other thing…
The argument has always been made that the trouble with
capitalism is that it’s materialistic, while
collectivism can afford to pay attention to the
nonmaterial. But the experience has been the opposite.
There are no societies that have emphasized the purely
material requisites of well-being as much as the
collectivist…it is in the free societies that there has
been a far greater development of the nonmaterial,
spiritual, artistic aspects of well-being.
I don’t think that a revolutionary, once-and-for-all
approach [to achieving political liberty] will
succeed.…I think the odds are that a free society is on
the way out but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t
fight for it, or that sulking in our tents explaining to
one another how nice it would be if we could only wipe
the slate clean and get our way is an effective means of
fighting for a free society.
From “Which Way for Capitalism?,” by Milton
Friedman, May 1978:
One meaning that is often attached to free enterprise
is that enterprises shall be free to do what they
want.…What we really mean is the freedom of individuals
to set up enterprises. It is the freedom of an
individual to engage in an activity so long as he uses
only voluntary methods of getting other individuals to
cooperate with him.
We talk about ourselves as a free enterprise society.
Yet in terms of the fundamental question of who owns the
means of production in the corporate sector we are 48
percent socialistic because the corporate tax is 48
percent.
I had a debate…with that great saint of the U.S.
consumer, Ralph Nader. I posed the question of state
laws requiring people who ride motorcycles to wear
helmets.…That law is the best litmus paper to
distinguish true believers in individualism…because the
person riding the motorcycle is risking only his own
life. He may be a fool to drive that motorcycle without
a helmet, but part of freedom…is the freedom to be a
fool.
Many people complain about government waste, but I
welcome it…for two reasons. In the first place,
efficiency is not a desirable thing if somebody is doing
a bad thing.…Government is doing things that we don’t
want it to do; so the more money it wastes, the better.
In the second place, waste brings home to the public at
large the fact that government is not an efficient and
effective instrument for achieving its objectives. One
of the great causes for hope is a growing
disillusionment…with the idea that government is the
all-wise, all-powerful big brother who can solve every
problem that comes along.
When Gerald Ford became president and called a summit
conference to do something about the problems of
inflation…I sat at that summit conference and heard
representatives of one group after another…and they all
said the same things: “Of course, we recognize that in
order to stop inflation we must cut down government
spending. And I tell you, the way to cut down government
spending is to spend more on me.” That was the universal
refrain.
From “Where Are We on the Road to Liberty?,” by
Milton Friedman, June 1987 (based on a speech Friedman
gave at a Reason banquet in October 1986):
[Capitalism and Freedom] was a book directed at
the general public that was destined to sell more than
400,000 copies in the next 18 years, written by an
established professor at a leading university and
published by a leading university press. Yet it was not
reviewed in a single popular American publication.
There have been a few victories. We did, after all, get
rid of the [Civil Aeronautics Board] that regulated the
airlines. We did get rid of military conscription—that’s
something truly to celebrate. But the improvement has
been meager. The most one can say is that no major new
spending programs have been passed in the last six
years. The increase in government spending, outside the
military, has been predominantly the effect of earlier
programs.…I do not cite the contrast between the world
of ideas and the world of practice as a reason for
either dismay or pessimism; on the contrary…there always
is and always has been a long lag between a change in
the climate of opinion and a change in actual policy.
Why has there been so great a shift in the attitudes of
the public [toward accepting free market ideas]? I’m
sorry to confess that I do not believe it occurred
because of the persuasive power of such books as
Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom or Ayn Rand’s
Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or our
own Capitalism and Freedom. Such books
certainly played a role, but I believe the major reason
for the change is the extraordinary force of factual
evidence.…The great hopes that had been placed in Russia
and China by the collectivists and socialists turned
into ashes.…Similarly, the hopes that were placed in
Fabian socialism and the welfare state in Britain or the
New Deal in the United States were disappointed. One
major government program after another started with the
very best aims and with noble objectives and turned out
not to deliver the goods.…Ideas played their part. But
they played their part not by producing a reaction
against the spread of government but by determining the
form that that reaction took. The role we play as
intellectuals is not to persuade anybody but to keep
options open and to provide alternative policies that
can be adopted when people decide they have to make a
change.
From “The Best of Both Worlds,” June 1995, an
interview conducted by Brian Doherty:
Throughout my career, I spent most of my time on
technical economics.…If you really want to engage in
policy activity, don’t make that your vocation. Make it
your avocation. Get a job. Get a secure base of income.
Otherwise, you’re going to get corrupted and
destroyed.…One of the most important things in my career
is that I always had a major vocation which was not
policy. I don’t regard what I’ve done in the field of
monetary policy as on the same level as what I’ve done
about trying to get rid of the draft or legalizing
drugs.…But by having a good firm position in the
academic world, I was perfectly free to be my own person
in the world of policy. I didn’t have to worry about
losing my job. I didn’t have to worry about being
persecuted.
I think you’ll make a mistake if you’re going to spend
your life as a policy wonk. I’ve seen some of my
students who have done this. And some of them are fine,
and some of them, especially those who have gone to
Washington and stayed, are not.
I am a Republican with a capital “R” and a libertarian
with a small “l.” I have a party membership as a
Republican, not because they have any principles, but
because that’s the way I am the most useful and have
most influence. My philosophy is clearly libertarian.
There are many varieties of libertarians. There’s a
zero-government libertarian, an anarchist. There’s a
limited-government libertarianism. They share a lot in
terms of their fundamental values. If you trace them to
their ultimate roots, they are different. It doesn’t
matter in practice, because we both want to work in the
same direction.
I would like to be a zero-government libertarian [but] I
don’t think it’s a feasible social structure. I look
over history, and outside of perhaps Iceland, where else
can you find any historical examples of that kind of a
system developing?
From “Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business,”
October 2005, a roundtable of essays featuring Friedman,
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor
CEO T.J. Rodgers:
I believe Mackey’s flat statement that “corporate
philanthropy is a good thing” is flatly wrong. Consider
the decision by the founders of Whole Foods to donate 5
percent of net profits to philanthropy. They were
clearly within their rights in doing so. They were
spending their own money.…But what reason is there to
suppose that the stream of profit distributed in this
way would do more good for society than investing that
stream of profit in the enterprise itself or paying it
out as dividends and letting the stockholders dispose of
it? The practice makes sense only because of our obscene
tax laws, whereby a stockholder can make a larger gift
for a given after-tax cost if the corporation makes the
gift on his behalf than if he makes the gift directly.
That is a good reason for eliminating the corporate tax
or for eliminating the deductibility of corporate
charity, but it is not a justification for corporate
charity.
From “The Father of Modern School Reform,”
December 2005, an interview conducted by Nick Gillespie:
We have been going from a rural or quasi-rural society
to an aristocratic society. There’s no doubt that in
recent years the upper end of the income scale has
enjoyed a much larger increase in income and wealth than
the lower end.
I want [education] vouchers to be…available to everyone.
They should contain few or no restrictions on how they
can be used. We need a system in which the government
says to every parent: “Here is a piece of paper you can
use for the educational purposes of your child. It will
cover the full cost per student at a government school.
It is worth X dollars towards the cost of educational
services that you purchase from parochial schools,
private for-profit schools, private nonprofit schools,
or other purveyors of educational services. You may add
from your own funds to the voucher if you wish to and
can afford to.”
Empowering parents would generate a competitive
education market, which would lead to a burst of
innovation and improvement, as competition has done in
so many other areas. There’s nothing that would do so
much to avoid the danger of a two-tiered society, of a
class-based society. And there’s nothing that would do
so much to ensure a skilled and educated work force.
From “Can We Bank on the Federal Reserve?,” November
2006, a roundtable that included the last interview
Friedman granted to Reason, conducted by Brian Doherty:
I do not think you or I can say what the right
savings rate is or should be. There’s nothing wrong with
a person, family, or country saying, “We have high
enough income. We don’t need more. We’re going to spend
it all.” We can have a perfectly prosperous and active
economy along those lines. I don’t think it’s helpful to
ask, “Is this rate right or wrong?” Instead we should
ask, “Have we adopted polices that reduce incentives to
save?”
The U.S. economy is capable of very good growth provided
the government keeps its hands off. Unfortunately,
there’s a strong propensity for the government to do
things that are harmful rather than helpful. For
example, Sarbanes-Oxley [the post-Enron law attempting
to curb accounting fraud] is very unfortunate. It tells
every entrepreneur in America: Don’t take risks. That’s
not what we want. The function of the entrepreneur is to
take risks, and if he’s forced not to take risks and to
spend on accountants rather than products, the economy
is not going to expand or grow.
