The Underlying Argument

Quoting economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006):

“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

The Loss Of Freedom

Quoting Walter Williams:

People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What’s more, they believe they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.

Free To Choose

John Stossel

Quoting columnist John Stossel:

“America’s current struggles notwithstanding, life here is pretty good. We have a standard of living that’s the envy of most of the world. Why did that happen? Prosperity isn’t the norm. Throughout history and throughout the world, poverty has been the norm. Most of the world still lives in dire poverty. Of the 6 billion people on earth, perhaps 1 billion have something close to our standard of living. Why did America prosper when most of the people of the world are still poor? Milton Friedman taught me the answer. More than any other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, clearly warned the world about the unintended consequences of big government. ‘We’ve become increasingly dependent on government,’ said Friedman. ‘We’ve surrendered power to government; nobody has taken it from us. It’s our doing. The results — monumental government spending, much of it wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to see helped.’ That’s from Friedman’s PBS TV series ‘Free to Choose,’ which aired 30 years ago and became the basis of his No. 1 bestseller by the same name. The title says a lot. If we are free to make our own choices, we prosper.”

Read more here. . . .