Milton Friedman - Greed

In his book "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom.

An excerpt from an interview with Phil Donahue in 1979.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_F...

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  News & Politics

[ArborWeek]

Milton Friedman was an idiot.

[freedomunrestricted]

"is human competition natural" some interesting articles from googling that. " Both crime and genius are expressions of young men's competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success." from psychology today.

[freedomunrestricted]

Yea sorry but native history shows otherwise, there have always been games and competitions where when has tried to best the other. Like counting coup to prove bravery. Heck lacrosse was originally invented by Native Americans. Or how about ancient Greeks and their Olympics. And while cooperation was born out of necessity. Being able to outdo others was a form of courtship to show a woman who would be a better provider. Got any research to prove otherwise or just your own experiences?

[hawie2]

okay. but even you, who believes we should go back to the matriarchal society (which holds some merit and is an interesting prospect) and believes we should change etc- are having a competition with me. albeit non-physical one. and theres absolutely nothing at stake. not even much of an audience. so my contentions is that competition is an innate characteristic of the human being and can subside or expand depending on cultural circumstances but never truly disappear.

[xmattycorex]

Yeah sure by like I said we're a product of our environments and those areas that believed in acquiring resources are what they produced. Many of the areas, especially the 5 nations that took up the whole east coast did not and didn't produce people with ideas of property or violence. Instead they had a massive direct-democracy that was overseen by women and could recall any unworthy delegates and you married into the woman's name and family, my point is we must change how we view each other.

[hawie2]

i understand what your saying but for the most part, those primitive-communism type societies were small. what happened when a neighboring primitive-communism type society came knocking at the gates? it wasn't all rosie right? i mean conflict has seemingly existed since the beginning of time and at the root of that conflict has been greed or at the very least, a desire to acquire as much as possible. in other words to compete

[xmattycorex]

Yeah no there is no natural desire to succeed and did not come from millions of years competing to survive, it's the opposite, the evolution of man relied heavily on cooperation to survive not "I need to collect more food to be better than another guy." Theses desires are not natural and are a direct result of sociological conditions. We're all merely a product of our environments, which in turns displays what sort of a society we have, which is obviously self-serving and superficial now sadly.

[xmattycorex]

Huh? Feudal systems didn't show up until thousands of years, the evolution of humans relied primarily on humans cooperating together, I mean you don't believe we've only been here for 6,000 years do you? The evolution if man goes back starting maybe 2 million years ago and up until the discovery of the America's, both north and south America's were a form of primitive-communism. The idea of "property" and before could be when those ideas came about in the Eurasia area then.

[motaj16]

2min & 23 sec of Pure Geniuses....... Current Administration has had 5 yrs, cant make that much sense.

[hawie2]

so where were there kings? feudal systems. slaves. wars. etc...the very evolution of the human being is a result of competition is it not?