(2006-11-17) Milton Friedman Dead

Milton Friedman died yesterday.

David Boaz on his legacy. Then in 1962, amidst the enthusiasm for John F Kennedy's New Frontier, he published "CapitalismAndFreedom," a book that influenced a whole generation of younger people. He proposed such ideas as School Vouchers to bring the benefits of competition to education, a flat-rate tax (Flat Tax) to make the income tax less burdensome, and floating Exchange Rate-s to improve international finance... He was enlisted as an adviser to Republican presidents and candidates, yet rejected the label "conservative," insisting that he is a liberal like Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, or a Libertarian in modern terms... Estonia quickly became one of the post-Soviet success stories. When its young Prime Minister Mart Laar visited Washington, he was asked where he got the idea for his market-based reforms. Laar replied, "We read Milton Friedman and F A Hayek." Another successful reformer, Czech Prime Minister VaclavKlaus, was described as a "Friedmanite with a staff of Hayekians."... Millions of people around the world who live in freedom give thanks for the life and accomplishments of the man who said, "My central theme in public advocacy has been the promotion of human Freedom."

Walter Block says Nor in this recollection do I want to touch upon his Monetarism, his championing of School Vouchers, the Negative Income Tax, flexible Exchange Rate-s, Anti-Trust laws, his opposition to the Gold Standard and to Privatiz Ing roads and oceans. Libertarian-s have long disagreed with him on these issues, and this is not the time to delve into such longstanding controversies.

More from Arnold Kling and Brad De Long. He didn't believe that markets always worked best. It was, rather, that he believed that places where markets failed were atypical; that where markets failed there were almost always enormous profit opportunities from entrepreneurial redesign of institutions; and that the market system would create new opportunities for trade that would route around Market Failure-s. Most important, his distrust of government told him that Government Failure was pervasive, and that any expansion of government beyond the classical liberal state would be highly likely to cause more trouble than it could solve.