Exploring Liberty: The Machinery of Freedom

David Friedman is an economist, political philosopher, and the author of many books including The Machinery of Freedom, wherein he lays the groundwork for a society based exclusively on voluntary transactions. In this Exploring Liberty lecture, Friedman discusses the main premises of The Machinery of Freedom and offers a few additional conclusions he has reached in the years after the first edition of the book was published in 1973.

An .mp3 version of this lecture is available here: http://bit.ly/w3Rr8r

Produced by Evan Banks.

• Category

  News & Politics

[capoman1]

This guy is as sharp as a tack.

[Arick Mittler]

I think this is a very strong philosophy. He concedes to some level that his his ideas do not equally apply to national defense, but I think the problem is not in his theory, but rather, the question. Nation defense is border protection. Nations are the product of government, there is no need to defend them or even mind them without government to in the first place. You don't have to explain how to defend that State in a stateless system. A private rights agency can represent those anywhere.

[raiden3thww]

just as you buy health insurance, you would buy insurance with your particular agency. because free market - the price would have to be affordable for large amount of people (because agencies obviously want to make as much profit as possible) thus it would be much more cheaper than now. today, you are forced to buy it with the state. in anarchist society, the choice would ultimately law on your shoulders. ergo - nobody would force you to buy anything.

[bob bibble]

your arguement of defence is so flawed, charity and volunteering for defense???! you obviously dont know how long defense programmes take to bring to the fore front. you cant just decide lets go to war and then go to war tommorow!

[bob bibble]

how would poor people afford the agency?

[Justin Hall]

Why would they lose their customers? Wouldn't people that WANTED to bribe the judge be more likely to chose them? I see it the other way around: Government is benign until the greed of business corrupts it.

[Justin Hall]

So, in David's world, What if you can't afford to pay a bunch of private institutions to protect your rights? Do you just die in a gutter robbed, raped, and poor? This explanation doesn't deal with the issue of the welfare state at all besides sweeping all of the poor, and disabled people under the rug.

[howerut]

Sure they might take one bribe, but as soon as they are found to have taken a bribe (and it is in the interests of both corporations to make sure the other does not bribe the judge) then the judge will lose all of their clients and go bust. Corporations are really only dangerous when they get in bed with government, not so much on their own.

[delboy674]

No I have, but I can't help thinking that this concept of "private judges" are open to corruption and bribery when every decision they make is in the interest or disinterest of two large and powerful corporations.

[Daniel Schmuhl]

I can see that you didn't even watch the first few minutes.

[delboy674]

When the outcome of every judicial decision dictates which of two parties benefits financially isn't it painstakingly obvious that bribery and corruption will be rife?