On Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, who recently died, made popular the view that “economic freedom is by definition part of freedom”. This view has become widely accepted among conservative and libertarian think tanks in the last decades of the twentieth century such as The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. This essay argues that Friedman’s formulation, while rhetorically brilliant and seemingly self-evident, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of freedom. Friedman assumes in a free society the bulk of individual choices are left up to the market, and government is simply the umpire of the game. This essay by contrast argues that this formulation misconstrues the nature of freedom. For the very question of freedom is where to place the boundary between markets and government in the first place, i.e., determining the rules of the game versus moves within the game itself.For a fuller discussion, see my essay "What Color Tie Do You Vote For?: Or “Is Economic Freedom Part of Liberty”?
at www.freedomandcapitalism.com