Milton Friedman - Iceland 1 of 8

Friedman visited Iceland in the autumn of 1984, met with prominent Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the Tyranny of the Status Quo. He participated in a lively television debate on August 31, 1984 with leading socialist intellectuals, including current President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. When they complained that a fee was charged for attending his lecture at the University and that hitherto, lectures by visiting scholars had been free-of-charge, Friedman replied that previous lectures had not been free-of-charge in a meaningful sense: Lectures always have related costs. What mattered was whether attendees or non-attendees covered those costs. Friedman thought that it was fairer that only those who attended paid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_friedman

Playlist for all 8 videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Ds_LRROLI&feature=PlayList&p=5119E3A...

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[twk373]

Four on one, and the socialists still can't take him.

[JohnGaltHasSpoken]

Legend has it that Milton Friedman never lost a debate in his whole life !!!

[theredscourge]

Surprise surprise! Iceland ignores Friedman's ideas, and some 25 years later they go totally bankrupt!

[tjohn1986]

@GluttonForSex It is. Qatar is richer, much like UAE and Saudi, all to do with oil. If you want to see how a nation with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world can be destroyed by it's economic policies, look at Venezuela. And if you want to see how a country with no natural resources can succeed due to free trade and free market, look at Hong Kong.

[GluttonForSex]

Watching this in the context of the Eurozone crisis is quite fascinating. Sometimes I feel like my country (Norway) is sort of like the last bastion of liberal democracy left.

Having been raised in a Trotskyist family but being increasingly disillusioned with Europe, I'm really on the fence on all of this. My biggest worry is that Friedman is correct--our wealth and security is mainly the consequence of our oil reserves, rather than of our politics being fundamentally correct.

[tehatemachine]

@LordSparkisvati If we all followed free trade and limited Government role. This whole planet would light up with wealth and prosperity! Next is outer space where we colonize even more worlds.

[tehatemachine]

@twk373 This "big corporations" Everyone bitches about. Where the Result of government intervention. Especially the Banking companies that screwed everyone over. They where backed by Sam.

[H1TMANactual]

@JohnGaltHasSpoken In the words of Reagan, his wife was the only one who beat him in a debate.

[spader49]

olafar ragnar, the blonde-haired twit who is destroyed time and time again by the boss Friedman, is the current Prime minister of Iceland, the current bankrupt country.

I guess you should have listened ragnar, you left-wing ignoramus.

[Tarclasp]

As much as I love Freidman, I must agree that answers are usually not extremes. For instance, even if a "free" market is ideal, you're always going to have contemptuous crooks that will miscongrue these ideals. Seems the only free in the Great American credit swap fiasco was freedom of regulation or accountability.

[twk373]

@brentoneccles

Are you kidding? America has aggressively pursued socialism, cronyism, central banking, and command economics for the last 100 years. We have long since abandoned the views of Friedman; he was a lone voice speaking against the tide.

Markets are freedom. To say "markets and freedom" is very silly. They are the same thing.

Safety nets "sustained" by violence are an illusion and always end up self-destructing. The only sustainable safety nets are family and private charities.

[twk373]

@brentoneccles

There is no particular way the market "ought" to function. That is precisely the point of a *free* market. People are free to exchange voluntarily, without the interference of clueless and corrupt bureaucrats.

The only people responsible for ruining things are those who embrace violence and coercion: i.e., the supporters of government rather than freedom. The problem is always and only the people who *take* bribes. No one should be in a position to take bribes.