Customer Reviews

Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition

5 star:		(38)
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1 star:		(7)

 

 

It has taken me these many years to get around to reading this classic on libertarian capitalism and, contrary to the views of a growing number of economic naysayers, Friedman still has plenty to tell us as to how the economy should operate if given its rightful freedom. For one, political and economic freedom go hand in hand according to Friedman's philosophy derived from his mentor Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School. To an increasing number of libertarians across this country, government should be shrinking to the point of collecting less taxes, reducing bureaucratic demands, and letting people decide for themselves what is good for the economy. In this environment of deregulation, marijuana as a grow-op might be considered a good business practice if only governments would start legalizing it. Invariably, it is the mythical power of the marketplace that will determine the outcome of such ventures. The same argument applies, in Friedman's mind, to globalization with the expansion of international trade. Slapping currency exchange restrictions and tariffs on trade between countries only limits the potential for markets to work to their optimum. Inside a country, fiscal policy should work hand in glove with monetary policy to lower corporate taxes, keep interest rates low, and remove tariff barriers between states and provinces. Big governments should be spending more time creating opportunities for economic investment than creating level playing fields for social equality. If the first works properly, the second will naturally follow. Poverty, in his estimation, occurs when politicians attempt to redistribute income across society by raising taxes on the rich, thus creating a deepening sense of welfare entitlement. Marketing boards and quota systems are the bane of any capitalistic order that thrives on untrammelled competition. For those of us who are still recovering from the shock of the market meltdown in 2008 and beyond, Friedman might remind us that the problem was not so much the lack of regulation as the fact that government was too involved in the life of the economy with having to manage a rising deficit ceiling, servicing a growing debt, and enforcing an ineffective tax system. To those who might think that Friedman is a largely discredited thinker and economist, think again. Here is a man whose views still carry significant sway with the likes of Ron Paul, the Bilderberg Group, multi-national corporations, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

All excellent, quickly sent. This is an excellent service that we are very lucky to have, especially in smaller communities where such materials are difficult to source otherwise.

few actually define their terms.

It is obvious that most of the people who speak out against books like this one have never read anything from an individualist, classical liberal or otherwise pro-market point of view. There is nothing noble about thinking that the government must do everything for everyone (which also presupposes that everyone must do as they are told by the government). If you have only heard the nonsensical leftist view of "capitalism" this is a book for you. WARNING: It will challenge you to actually think about the subject, not just have a knee-jerk reaction!

One previous review here quoted the following from Milton Friedman, in the Financial Times (UK) June 2003:

"The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did."

From these two sentences the reviewer attempted to conclude:

"There you are, the ideas of this book have been repudiated by the man himself. What more evidence do you need to show they are wrong?"

This is typical of the low level of thought that is used to criticize works like this. A slight change in opinion about a particular issue in NO way constitutes a "repudiation" of a lifetime's work.

Just read it for yourself and see what you have been missing!

This is a foundation text that should be widely read and studied. Whether you agree with Friedman or not is not the point. These are ideas you need to actually consider and wrestle with. If you end up disagreeing with him and can state why, you will be the stronger for it. It is not enough to rail against them emotionally or call them lies. They are not lies; they are ideas and arguments that ask for debate. Personally, I have always been a fan of Friedman and am ever grateful that he stood against the tide of the postwar political movements with these powerful arguments for freedom.

People often caricature Friedman to their own discredit. His arguments here are not simply that government is bad, but that using government is often a poor way to get at a desirable social end. He certainly does not need me to speak for him, but if you think he is for huge corporations and letting the poor without help to fend for themselves, you misunderstand him and should read this work carefully. Big corporations, he argues several places in this book, are the result of taxation schemes that encourage the retention and reinvestment of earnings that would otherwise have gone to the shareholders to reinvest as they see fit - in other enterprises, consumption, or charity (as well as in taxes). This is only one example among many of popular prejudices against Friedman that do him real injustice.

The book is only a couple of hundred pages, is not hard to read, but does pay off the most dividends if you take your time reading it and consider what he has to say rather than jumping to conclusions without wrestling with your own thoughts (whether you agree with the author or not). It was written in 1962, so some of the context of the book will require some understanding on the part of the reader. It was a very different time than today. However, the arguments remain solid and strong to the benefit of anyone who will spend time thinking about why they agree or disagree with this Nobel Laureate.

Oh, and he uses the word LIBERAL for his philosophy and explains the word in it classic sense rather than in the modern US re-definition of the word.

This is a new edition of Milton Friedman's classic 1962 capitalist manifesto. As such, it was ignored, spurned and hated for decades by the intellectual, post-Keynesian establishment. In the 60s, Friedman once found himself debating a liberal who attacked him by simply reciting Friedman's views of the proper role of government. This was working rather well with the audience of college students until he quoted Friedman's opposition to the military draft. Friedman suddenly found himself awash in the unexpected cheers of students. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of his career. Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, and his ideas gained some degree of mainstream acceptance in the Reagan years - although many of his thoughts remain controversial. To the extent that Friedman debunks myths about the Great Depression that are widely accepted as fact, perhaps he has a point about the semi-privatization of education. We strongly recommend this volume to those who seek a deeper understanding of government's role in a free-market economy.

The link between economic and political freedoms has been supported for a long time, and Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" is one of the more important texts in that intellectual tradition. The central thesis of this book is that the private ownership and enterprise, rather than the government controlled services, is the true guarantor of personal freedoms. Friedman acknowledges that there are indeed certain activities that a government has a legitimate role in (like the arbitration and the enforcement of the laws), but those tend to be exceptional and require a special set of circumstances in order to be justified. In the second chapter he gives a non-exhaustive list of fourteen activities that the government has asserted an exclusive role in for which there is no good justification. It is interesting to note that as we approach the fourteenth anniversary of the publication of this book, only a couple of those are still not in effect (there is no universal draft during a peacetime and the Post Office does not have an exclusive right to distribute mail any more).

The chapter on monetary policy is very interesting. Friedman considers monetary policy to be one of those activities over which a government can exercise a legitimate monopoly. This has however been disputed in recent years by more libertarian thinkers - even when it comes to printing and distributing money, there is no good a-priory reason why a private entity wouldn't be able to accomplish this as well. In fact, I would probably have more trust in money issued by some well established corporations or banks than that issued by 90%+ of governments around the world. In this chapter Friedman also goes at length expounding on pros and cons of the gold standard, which nowadays is not all that in vogue at all.

The chapter on discrimination is also one of the more interesting ones. Friedman outlines what would now be considered a consistently libertarian position: although he personally finds all sorts of discrimination based on race, gender, or religion particularly abhorrent, he doesn't think that it is the role of government to impose any sorts of measures that would amount to enforced "inclusiveness." He has a problem with the very notion of "discrimination." In many instances one man's discrimination is another man's right to exercise a taste preference. Whatever it is, Friedman thinks that the best and most effective way of dealing with discrimination is again through allowing the existence of free market. In a perfectly free market discrimination against individuals or groups will have immediate and very deleterious consequences for any purveyor of goods or services. Here again the case is made that capitalism is the best guarantor of personal freedom. This is not just an abstract argument - time and again the experience has shown that whenever a group was allowed to freely compete in the marketplace, the discrimination and the prejudice against that group has diminished.

Another topic that gets into Friedman's crosshairs is that of overregulation of all sorts of trades and professions. The supposed aim of most of these regulations, licensing and certifications is the protection of the public. However, it is a plain empirical fact that almost all of those regulations are imposed on the request of the regulated industries, rather after an outcry from the public. What these regulations in fact do is create barriers to entry and shielding of the industry insiders form the competition. Friedman argues that this is yet another form of limitation of freedom that is imposed through the prevention of the existence of a free market. He argues that this is seldom justified, and that market would create a much more efficient way of weeding out the incompetent products and services, even in the case of medical industry. One can't help think that of the present debates over the medical insurance in the US, and wonder how much of it could be solved by simple deregulation of the whole industry.

As it may be clear from the examples above, Milton Friedman is a very insightful thinker with ideas that were many decades ahead of his time. His works deserve to be continuously read by all who wish to implement a fully functioning free market economy. That is the surest guarantee of the personal freedom that we can ever hope to implement.

Milton Friedman _Capitalism and Freedom_ presents an analysis of modern America (at least the America of 1960) against the values of classical liberalism. First he begins with an arguement that economic freedoms can't be separated from other personal freedoms, such as speech or privacy. He than lays out the basic values of classical liberalism and proceeds to test the American experience in various areas of public policy against this principles. Of course he finds that the country has moved away from the path to freedom, as he sees it, and presents various routes to its return.

For the most part I enjoyed the book but some areas, such as in fiscal and monetary problems, I had difficulty since I have no economics training. While Friedman's arguements are interesting they are hardly groundbreaking. Anyone familar with the development of liberal thought will be able to anticipate his point of view. But it is refreshing to see these ideas held up to American public policy.

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.

Once this topic is discussed, it no longer can be denied that it,
having breeched itself, is a topic. Capitalism is indeed Freedom and Freedom is itself repeated, therefore Capitalism is as such the multiple of the same. Looking back through the years, Friedman has drawn on experience and observation to write this book. Crafting together letters to form words and thus meanings, Friedman expresses himself in a written language. The cover is also very cool.

It is funny that the negative review came from a fellow Brazilian. As someone that lived there for 25 years, I can tell you that if the Brazilian people and its government understood the message of Friedman's book the country would not be in the deplorable position it is (and it has ever been). It is not the corporations that will look over the people, it is the people who will look over themselves, and use the corporations to achieve their goals. The real problem is when government intervenes, and people think that is the right way to do things, since they are "entitle" to this and that. It is because of people like you, dear Brazilian, that the country is what it is.