passed away. He leaves behind him a legacy of almost religious worship of the “free market” that has been a mixed blessing to society. I know Libertarians who practically worshipped this guy while the rest of us wondered where humanity fit into the equation (or were we all just economic units of production and capital).
The free market has produced more wealth and benefit for humanity than was even imaginable centuries ago. Humanity fits into the equation as the direct beneficiaries of this free market.
The rest of you wonder, do you? Well yeah…I can see that. After all, thats why the Free Market, or some reasonable facimile there of, has been relagated to the dust-bin of history, while the great Communist (and its derivatives) economic model has flurished throughout the world…
Er…or something like that. But the rest of you wonder about that whole Free Market thingy (appearently only (L)libertarians don’t wonder), and that you are just just economic units of production and capital, the workers and peasants, striving for a better society, just cogs in the great machine of state, driven by the great workers party, producing what the state deems needful (and to those who have a need for them), directing your every…
Er…nope, not that. I’m sorry…what were you wondering again? 
-XT
p.s. I never worshiped Friedman…well, at least not formally. Just some adoration was enough for me. Ignore that shrine in the corner…
I guess if following the logic and science of economics equates to ‘religious worship’, then I’m ready to be baptized. He did have a Nobel prize, you know. He was essentially right on just about everything he ever formally said.
Milton Friedman was a great man. He may be singlehandedly responsible for more wealth creation and improvement of the human condition, of any person in the last 50 years. His tireless efforts on behalf of free trade alone have probably increased the wealth in the world by hundreds of billions of dollars.
He was a great man. The last of the great famous free market economists, along with Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
Or, to quote Hugh Akston, the first of their return.
The free market is the friend, not the enemy, of humanity. It allows individuals freedom to pursue their desires and express themselves. Milton Friedman did more to help free people than most “intellectuals” in the past century.
You know, there are more than a few notches in between those two extremes.
Some of us see both the benefits and the dangers of the market.
Check out carefully what the old toad got his Nobel Prize for.
All he publicaly did was broadcast the Fischer Equation, which is rather dubious.
MV = PT
Well since smarter people than I do not know what ‘M’ is, and I did not waste my life looking for it (my old tutor who recently semi retired did), my view is that he was a good guy at the ‘sound bite’ - and a shit economist.
I heard some crap that before him people tried to manipulate the unemployment levels to regulate the economy ( BBC - obviously a retard wrote the script )
- Keynes just said that the Government controls the interest rate
- which in his time was true - and they had other signals that kept the wolves at bay
While I do not generally wish ill of the dead
- I would like Milton Friedman to experience Hell
He was a fool
Since there might be a few economists here, I might as well explain my dislike, the money supply is infinitely flexible (man can invent money) when he was yacking, credit cards were starting.
Gee - the ratio of human to non human income - that gets you a Nobel prize
I spit on his grave - and normally I am not vituperative.
Jeez, now you’re talking like Friedman invented the market. He didn’t. Friedman provided ideological ammunition for the Reagan Revolution. That is it. That is what he accomplished in life. That is all he will be remembered for; even his Nobel Prize will be forgotten except by economists and historians.
Now, if you want to argue the Reagan Revolution was responsible for wealth creation and the improvement of the human condition, we can debate that.
I dont think so…I think on the free market side there are plenty of notches, running the gammit from perhaps Taiwan, to a US style market, through to what the Euro’s have. THATS your ‘notches’. I suppose it comes down to what you think ‘Free Market’ means, and what you think I think ‘Free Market’ means.
Where are the ‘notches’ on the communist side though? China? They are running two separate systems…one system, their failing, crumbling communist system, the other a…yep, free market. Eventually I see a very large wall in China’s path…either they will shed the communist crap, or they will have to dismantle the only engine that is driving their economy forward, generating wealth both for their people AND proping up their government.
I’m sure some of you do…
-XT
C’mon col, this isn’t the 1890s. We all have it pretty nice for the most part. Now if you’re a brown person or a 8 year old somewhere making 50 cents a day by making shoes for 13 hours maybe I could understand the complaints…but they don’t show that on the news, so it’s all good.
Possibly we are using different definitions.
I take “Free Market” to imply laissez faire economics (the “free” in “Free Market”). In other words, zero government control of the market.
Communism on the other hand is total state control of the market.
Like I said, there are a lot of notches between those extremes.
You seem to be using “Free Market” interchangeably with “market.”
I think you’ve hit it on the head.
Economic libertarians have notorious difficulty distinguishing Keynes from Stalin.
No, “free market” does not mean “anarcho-capitalism”. That’s just bizarre, like mentally subsituting “communism” when other people say “liberalism”.
And to start this debate arguing that people who advocate a capitalist economic system only do so because they’re brainwashed fundamentalists is what’s known as “poisoning the well”.
If you think I’m just a brainwashed cultist, then why bother arguing with me? And why should I bother arguing with YOU, when you’ll simply dismiss anything I say as the ravings of a lunatic?
In other words, this thread would have been better opened in the pit if that’s what you want to argue about.
Because it’s fun! 
I find this post hilarious - full of contradictions and ridiculous mud-slinging. First of all, let me first ask what offense Milton Friedman committed against you sir or ma’am to deserve an eternity of torment?
Secondly, you have a warped view of the money supply. The money supply is defined as such, maybe this will help clear things up for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#Scope . Put simply, M0 is printed/minted cash, M1 is M0 plus checking, M2 is M1 plus savings, and M3 is M2 plus more long-term accounts. No where in the computation of the money supply does it include credit cards - because credit cards are nothing more than short term loans. The money supply is in fact not “infinitely flexible.” To assume as much would be to act the fool that you accused Friedman of being. As the quantity of money supplied is increased, the price (or in the case of money, actual value in relation to other goods) of each individual unit of money is decreased, just as is the case with any other good in the market. The only way real wealth can be increased is with the creation or modification of goods to increase their value, usually through the laborious efforts of men. Otherwise, you get nothing more than a rise in the price level that decreases the value of money already in circulation, something I think it was Friedman referred to as “too many dollars chasing too few goods.”
I find it ironic that you champion Keynes (although noting your location I assume it is partially out of some nationalistic fervor) when he, too, recognized the MV=PT equation. Since you claim to be familiar with it, you’ll know that V stands for “velocity.” What is it you ask? Velocity is the rate at which money circulates and changes hands within a system. Keynes advocated a particularly dastardly manipulation of this fact in his General Theory… The velocity of money, in a fiat currency situation, means that government can print up new money, then spend it before others realize that the price level has increased and the value of money is in fact less due to an injection of new currency - this time lag is in essence the variable of velocity. During and previous to the Great Depression, when workers were on strike demanding higher wages, Keynes advised that the government issue more currency so that business could hike the nominal wages of its employees, so that they would think they were getting paid more when in reality their real wages went down - part of the whole deal would be that businesses would benefit as they would give nominal wage raises to their employees, yet those wages would still lower than the raise in the price level, which would allow employers to lock their employees into contracts along with other resources (labor, after all, being nothing more than a resource), while raising their prices to the new price level and turning a higher profit as a result of the widened gap between resource prices and sale prices.
Yes, I said it: your beloved Keynes advocated subduing the masses with nominal wage increases, which in the end did nothing more than hurt them. This continues to this day; it is what is meant when you hear on the news that real wages of manual laborers have actually fallen over the past few decades. While this sort of activity probably has the best of intentions (while on the other hand it could be the result of the underhanded efforts of politically-empowered big-business, which wouldn’t enjoy the kind of coercive power it does now if we lived in a purely free market - the evils of corporatism, the system we now live under, is all too often confused for the universally wealth increasing behavior of unfettered businesses in a truly competitive environment) it is actually counter-productive. This sort of policy does nothing but rob the lower class in favor of the upper. If you were truly were a pragmatic person, like you seem to insinuate you are, you would support policy/a system that actually helped those you seem to think are harmed by great men like Milton Friedman.
Furthermore, given your obviously insufficient knowledge of economics, I find your assessment of Friedman absolutely side-splitting. Furthermore, I should add that I’m an anarcho-capitalist, and don’t support some of what Friedman said, but I do greatly support most of it. I much prefer the writings of his market anarchist son, David, but I found your remarks about the man particularly offensive and just plain incorrect, so I felt obliged to respond.
See post #9.
My point was simply that I think it’s plausible to say that without Milton Friedman, markets would be much less free today. Not only did he help Reagan get elected (his book “Free To Choose” topped the NYT best seller lists the year Reagan was elected), but he was the intellectual father of the Gingrich era, which led to welfare reform, NAFTA, etc. He was immensely influential in Eastern Europe and South America when they both began their capitalist reformations. He was an economic advisor to Reagan. His PBS series “Free To Choose” was a smash hit.
Milton Friedman did more to popularize the benefits of capitalism and free markets than just about anyone else. How many economists are known widely through the general population? A handful. Milton was near the top of that short list.
On a personal note, ‘Free To Choose’ was hugely influential on me back in the 1980’s, as was his book “Capitalism and Freedom”.
I highly recommend that you read “Free To Choose”. You don’t have to agree with it, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more cogent, easy to read, intellectually sound defense of capitalism and markets. At the very least, it will help you understand your opponents better, and help prevent you from setting up straw men and knocking them down when debating libertarians.
Free To Choose - the website. BTW, the 1990 update of the ‘Free to Choose’ TV series was introduced on PBS by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As it happens I have a copy of it – somewhere in storage, along with a lot of other books I’ve picked up in the course of my peripatetic wanderings and promised myself I’d read one day . . . one day . . .
I’ve been resisting wading into this poisoned well thread, but here goes…
As Sam said, MF was a great economist and policy thinker. Whether you agree with him or not, he is highly respected among his peers, and has had a lasting impact on society. It was his monetarist ideas that Volker and Greenspan used to rid us of the stagflation of the 70s. Anyone who lived thru that era must realize what a mess it was.
But there’s something else that I want to talk about, and that is that he was always a gentleman whenever debating with people. We could use more folks like that around here. He never demonized his opposition, and treated everyone with respect. And he had a way of explaining complex ideas so that the common person could understand them. The world is a sadder place with him gone. A great thinker, and a great human being.