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Quotes of the Day for 31 July 2004 - Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was born at Brooklyn, New York on this day in 1912. His mother ran a small dry goods store, his father worked at various things without much success. Even though his father died the year he graduated from high school, Friedman was expected to go to college although his mother and older sisters were unable to pay for much of it. His college career was predicated on scholarships, getting his BA from Rutgers, his Masters from the University of Chicago, and his PhD from Columbia. He won the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science (often casually referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics) in 1976. Friedman's research has led him to take a libertarian stance on many issues, so not only do I tend to agree with him, he's one of the few practitioners of The Dismal Science who isn't terminally boring.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.

The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.... This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.
     - All from Milton Friedman

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