Galt's Gulch

I love Uncle Milty!!!

Posted by coaldigger 8 years, 6 months ago to Economics
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I could read his writings and listed to his lectures all day. "Auntie" Friedman was pretty good as well.
SOURCE URL: http://www.libertarianism.org/media/around-web/milton-friedman-maintaining-free-society

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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 8 years, 6 months ago
    Hello coaldigger,
    The essence of his argument reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.
    "If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
    Frederic Bastiat
    Respectfully,
    O.A.
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    • Posted by coaldigger 8 years, 6 months ago
      I think many loathe the human race, think we are evil and unclean. The more perverted the person, the more they think badly of others. While, as Herb points out below, there was an enlightenment and reformation, all vestiges of mysticism were not wiped out. Great benefits came from the progress but limitations persist. It is like being circumcised so we don't masturbate. We must limit freedom so we don't commit evil. Evolution is dog eat dog but dogs learn to ally themselves with men. Traders are greedy but those he trades with are equally greedy so they have to trade value for value UNLESS someone with a gun can be called on to distort the market in one side's favor.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 6 months ago
    Trying to remember the name of that Canadian leftist reporter that got after Miltie and what she called the Boys From Chicago and in doing so spelled out exactly how the socialist left is set up backing up Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. That's where I really found out hwo badly the left had savaged the definition of words and dictionary business and it was nice that he caused an excess of revolutionary zeal and a surfeit of socialist frijoles.

    Now for those who don't speak Latin American Spanish and colloquial slang or frase typica I will explain in a limited way that spilled the beans has a very special and easily recognized meaning and smell punctuated by the sound of barking spiders.

    What was that airheads name? Ah well never mind. The substance was in the beans

    Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein I found it! Dudette was trying to be another Tanya but was several decades and one Bolivian Raner Battalion short of a full magazine.
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    • Posted by salta 8 years, 6 months ago
      I recommend watching Shock Doctrine, just for an understanding of how far the media misrepresents the world. It was a long time ago, but I seem to recall images of extreme fascism in south america, including military opening fire on civilians, accompanied by the narrator saying how this shows how "capitalism does not work"!!
      There are too many people who are intellectually weak enough to accept that kind of trash.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 6 months ago
    When you go to the polls to vote, remember this:

    "We may well be fighting a losing battle, but if its the right battle, if it's the alternative to serfdom, then we ought to fight it."
    - Milton Friedman, December 7, 1975
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 8 years, 6 months ago
    Indeed!

    My favorites are his research on government-vs-private efficiency, and the definition of "involuntary servitude".

    He was just awesome, and others with common positions are not as likely to come along again or to be as clear and eloquent.
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  • Posted by blackswan 8 years, 6 months ago
    I heard uncle Milty a few times at Stanford. We had a group that thought he was an ace, including a few from Latin America. His logic was something to hear.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 6 months ago
    Many years ago, whenever I'd be with a group of businessmen in either a social or business setting and the talk of government regulation versus free enterprise came up, the talk became a study in ignorance. Without government interference, business would become too "dog eat dog." However if that interference was imposed on their particular enterprise it was stultifying progress and creating a doomed economic future. Because I was an officer in a trade organization, I was listening and talking to the leaders of large corporations. Their ignorance of economics was astounding. Their off-the-record talk of unethical practice was mind-blowing. The attitude in general for the up and coming companies was, "We'll be as ethical as anyone once we get to be as big as XYZ company." Morality in politics and business is only pervasive in the fictions projected by politicians and businessmen. Capitalism works whenever it is tried, but it is truly as Ayn Rand names it, "The Unknown Ideal."
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    • Posted by coaldigger 8 years, 6 months ago
      It is no surprise that most people have a warped perception of capitalism. Every institution that we have developed is anti-capitalism. We are educated to believe it will not work without regulation. We learn in church that self interest is just plain bad and never get around to considering long term self interest. The state tells us that only they can protect us from each other and that they need to grow in proportion to everything else to keep it in line.
      Any Rand is right, first comes a philosophy then a morality based on reason and then organizations such as a state or an economic system can function properly and an ideal system like capitalism can function ideally.
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      • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 6 months ago
        You are right on. Will it occur? Will a rational philosophy take hold and get in the mainstream? Not today. Not as far as I can see down the road. The freedom that became America happened during the Reformation, when people finally started to rebel against the stultification of the Dark Ages. It finally led to new ideas of individual freedom culminating in the closest mankind came to true freedom and prosperity in the 19th and early 20th century in America. But, look how long it took, and look at how low humanity had fallen before they arrived at that point. We have reached an apex and are now sliding back to the Dark Ages. The only question is how quickly and how far before we either turn it around or slide into oblivion.
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  • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 6 months ago
    it is tragic that MF was one of a very very very few who actually spoke out. but as we see what he said as did AR years ago has had no effect on government employees; why? because they do not give a damn.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 8 years, 6 months ago
    i enjoyed driving to Chicago from Columbus, Ohio and Ohio State U. to listen to him back in the 60's & 70's...he was so smooth and calm as he debunked socialism, progressives, and other idiots...
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