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_Friedman

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• economics
• philosophy
• politics
• government
• capitalism
• socialism
• communism
• freedom
• donahue

[Bangell99]

Can anyone recommend a good book or two that effectively counters the best arguments against libertarianism?

[goingalt]

CORRECTION and elaboration: Like the unelected EU commission who have not been elected by the populace at large but by other career politicians.

[goingalt]

Agreed. The problem is, for this gentleman's vision to come true, such a thing must occur. A political class (like the unelected EU commission who have not been elected by their representatives) must come to the fore of society. He may call the opposite of his vision hyperindividualism but outside of voluntary exchange is to argue that some visions are more worthy than others, but who decides what is worthy?

[lolzarfoomeister]

True. But people who know what's best for the rest of us, calling for universal arbitrage and adherence to their absolute morality and such things, are frankly a bit scary.

[goingalt]

Sorry I don't really understand this idea of objective merit. Do you mean to state an individual's personality traits or abilities? Individual talent is not what I mean. The problem I had with mikefavre35 is that he seems to suggest that individualistic goals (with or without talents) should be ignored if it conflicts with his vision (and individual vision which he doesn't define) because he apparently knows best. To do such a thing requires an arbiter of which choices are good and not good.

[sandc411]

i also don't need people to wash my car, clean my clothes, entertain me, bring me food, cut my hair, landscape my yard, fix my broken window, install a door, make my clothes, ...

profit as my motive, my ONLY motive makes me treat customers like kings. they like that, even though some are slobs. they come back. i hand-make pies. i could use machines, but people like that i make them. whether it's a better product is for them to say, not me.

[lolzarfoomeister]

My initial statement was intended to convey the notion that some people have a stronger tendency than others to rise to the top in society. It does not necessarily mean that those who reach equal position have equal quality, but rather that the likelihood for some to reach such position is greater than for others. Next, I intended to state that it is useless to consider any notion of "merit" other than that already observable by natural motion of people in society, because yes, it doesn't matter

[lolzarfoomeister]

I have been referring to two separate concepts of merit: subjective merit, which is a value judgment made by a person with reference to another person, which we obviously agree is entirely subjective; and objective merit, which could be defined as the natural tendency of a person to rise to the top in any given environment -- a quality of an individual which can be derived by observing the individual's movement in his environment, irrespective of interpretation. Apologies for the confusion.