Search Results for "Friedman"
Friedman, freedom and the legacy of libertarianism
Globalisation, free trade and international security
| Friedman, freedom and the legacy of libertarianism Originally Published in Real Issues No. 232 | 23 November 2006 |
Milton Friedman, one of the world's most famous economists, died last week at the age of 94. Friedman was a gifted man, earning a Nobel Prize in 1976, and an active, often outspoken, advocate of strictly limited government, personal freedom and individual responsibility.
Designing a better way of delivering public healthcare and education were two of his specific interests. But it was his ideas about regulating the supply of money to bring about stability in prices and employment that really set him apart as an economist. He challenged the prevailing ideas of John Maynard Keynes, arguing that governments always have to make a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, and that they should spend tax payers' money to stimulate demand in the economy. Friedman's ideas found favour with governments in the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, particularly in the 1980s.
While his economic thinking arguably helped create a framework for economic prosperity in the West, its success outside of the economic realm is questionable. Friedman was right to assume that people will generally make better decisions than governments because governments will never have all the information they need to meet everyone's aspirations. However, a blind faith in the free market to produce a materially and socially prosperous society ignores the fact that society is more than an economic system; it is a complex and living fabric made of people, not machines.
People are, at their core, relational and when personal freedom is stressed without regard for private virtue, the social fabric and the common good, the value of strong communities can be lost. The free-market economics Friedman advocated cannot create a decent and prosperous society, unless they are accompanied by a vision of ownership, investment and obligation to our families and communities.
The understanding of people as rational individualists, espoused by Chicago-school economists such as Friedman and others, was one of the reasons why the economic reforms of the 1980s caused harm as well as good. We must always be mindful of the consequences of a view of life that fails to consider the interconnectedness of community and the relational nature of human society.
Designing a better way of delivering public healthcare and education were two of his specific interests. But it was his ideas about regulating the supply of money to bring about stability in prices and employment that really set him apart as an economist. He challenged the prevailing ideas of John Maynard Keynes, arguing that governments always have to make a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, and that they should spend tax payers' money to stimulate demand in the economy. Friedman's ideas found favour with governments in the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, particularly in the 1980s.
While his economic thinking arguably helped create a framework for economic prosperity in the West, its success outside of the economic realm is questionable. Friedman was right to assume that people will generally make better decisions than governments because governments will never have all the information they need to meet everyone's aspirations. However, a blind faith in the free market to produce a materially and socially prosperous society ignores the fact that society is more than an economic system; it is a complex and living fabric made of people, not machines.
People are, at their core, relational and when personal freedom is stressed without regard for private virtue, the social fabric and the common good, the value of strong communities can be lost. The free-market economics Friedman advocated cannot create a decent and prosperous society, unless they are accompanied by a vision of ownership, investment and obligation to our families and communities.
The understanding of people as rational individualists, espoused by Chicago-school economists such as Friedman and others, was one of the reasons why the economic reforms of the 1980s caused harm as well as good. We must always be mindful of the consequences of a view of life that fails to consider the interconnectedness of community and the relational nature of human society.
