Thursday, January 25, 2007

Quotations From Milton Friedman

Following behind the discussion on vested interests, poverty and development in my previous post, it is timely to re-read the words of Milton Friedman on capitalism, freedom and economic change.

Arguably the greatest economist of the last century, Milton Friedman was an active contributor to Reason magazine. Doherty has collated a series of some Friedman's best insights from those contributions and they have been posted here.

Friedman's comments cover the gamut from liberty, to the role of capitalism in a free society and through to the main constraints facing the maintenance of a free and just society: one of which, Friedman identifies as intellectualism and the tendency of intellectuals to want to prescribe rules and restrictions that are "for the good of society".

These themes are discussed further in a contemporary setting on two websites that are new to me: QandO and the Liberty Papers. Both offer answers that bridge the work of Friedman with the political insights and philosophy of Jefferson et al. on how a civil society can retain its freedom but not fall victim to the vested interests so constraining Latin America.