Capitalism and freedom
News ·Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 23:01 EDT (link)
Some representative quotes from a book I'm reading, Capitalism and Freedom (Milton Friedman, University of Chicago Press, 1962) (emphasis mine):
The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated - a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates the source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement.
Comment: O that the organization of economic activity was removed from the control of political authority: not only would we be better off in this crisis, we'd never have gotten into it in the first place!
A society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.
A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child - such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist. Yet it is also true that such a government would have clearly limited functions and would refrain from a host of activities that are now undertaken by the federal and state governments in the United States, and their counterparts in other Western countries.
Comment. By liberal above he means in the classical sense; probably what would be called libertarian today.
A few related quotes from CLAMS members:
Every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection. The central problem of political theory: why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement? The mystery of civil obedience: why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of government, which always constitutes a small minority of the society?
—Murray N. Rothbard
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
—Attributed to Alexander Tytler
