Posted by Tina
Contest: Milton Friedman quotes Freidric Bastiat in one of the videos posted below:
“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Yesterday would have been Milton Friedman’s 102nd birthday. He is one of several brilliant economic minds of the last century. His work is timeless so it is most appropriate today. The Blaze posted a tribute yesterday with a listing of his more famous quotes. Since I share a love of freedom and sound economic policy with Friedman, The Blaze, and most of you, I thought I’d re-post them here:
1. “[Of the two key Constitutional principles for preserving freedom] [t]he second broad principle is that government power must be dispersed.”
2. “Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”
3. “Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task [protects individuals against coercion] so well. 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.”
4. “[Of the two key Constitutional principles for preserving freedom] [f]irst, the scope of government must be limited. Its major function must be to protect our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets.”
5. “To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.”
6. “…a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.”
7. “The possibility of co-ordination through voluntary co-operation rests on the elementary—yet frequently denied—proposition that both parties to an economic transaction benefit from it, provided the transaction is bi-laterally voluntary and informed.”
8. “The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom.”
9. “These then are the basic roles of government in a free society: to provide a means whereby we can modify the rules, to mediate differences among us on the meaning of the rules, and to enforce compliance with the rules on the part of those few who would otherwise not play the game.”
10. “Fundamental differences in basic values can seldom if ever be resolved at the ballot box; ultimately they can only be decided, though not resolved, by conflict. The religious and civil wars of history are a bloody testament to this judgment.”
You might also enjoy:
Note how Donahue tries to set a masochism trap right off the bat with a snarky comment about Friedman’s co-author and wife being on the back cover of their book. Yes, liberals were the same *&&#@!*$ in 1979…and they call themselves progressive?
Friedman is also good on The welfare state.
Two fascinating discussions between Thomas Sowell and William F. Buckley, and Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Francis Fox Piven.
Firing Line – Thomas Sowell w/ William F. Buckley Jr. (1981):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y021WAdUlW8
Frances Fox Piven vs. Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQkdSj6arn0
And this just in addressing the mess Obama’s made to the security of our country.
Pentagon Official: The Facts Are In, And Obama’s Policy Is A Direct Danger To The United States:
“The report is in, and the review of the president’s foreign policy is clear: If there is not an immediate course-reversal, the United States is in serious danger.
In 2013, the United States Institute for Peace, “a congressionally-created, independent, nonpartisan institution whose mission is to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflicts around the world,” was asked to assist the National Defense Panel with reviewing the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The National Defense Panel is a congressional-mandated bipartisan commission that’s co-chairs were appointed by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
On July 31, the National Defense Panel released its long-awaited report on the effects of the QDR and delivered its findings to Congress. The panel pulled no punches — its findings were a scathing indictment of Obama’s foreign policy, national security policy, and defense policy. The panel found that president Barack Obama’s QDR, military force reductions, and trillion-dollar defense budget cuts are dangerous — and will leave the country in a position where it is unable to respond to threats to our nation’s security. This, the panel concluded, must be reversed as soon as possible.
In particular, the report addresses the need for the administration to return to the flexible response doctrine — a policy where the military was tasked with being capable of fighting two wars at the same time. Given the current state of affairs and the threats posed to our nation, the panel felt that the two-war doctrine was still required to meet our nation’s national security challenges. The man-power reductions and budget cuts are both reflections of this change in policy, so it must be altered before that is possible.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/01/pentagon-official-the-facts-are-in-and-obamas-policy-is-a-direct-danger-to-the-united-states/#ixzz39G12tZs9
Allow me to add to the potpourri–a commentary (not mine) on the AHCA.
Our new, unwritten Constitution
August 1, 2014, 9:56 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
By now it should be clear that in the minds of Smart People the text of the statute that begat Obamacare is absolutely irrelevant. It literally does not matter. You can scrape out and point at some of the text, and they themselves will scoff. You’re being stupid. State doesn’t mean State, they say. You have to read it all in the larger ‘context’.
What is this context? Whatever they say it is.
This was, of course, obvious from the time the law was first put forth and shoved through. Legislators voted on it without knowing what was in it. Millions of lefties supported it without knowing what was in it. To the extent they did know what was in it, some of them even purported to have problems with it – but insisted the law be passed anyway, and then rabidly defended it afterward against all attack.
What was in the law, textually, was never important. What was important was simply that it was some sort of National Health Care Thing. That was enough. That sufficed. That’s all that mattered. From that point, game on.
In the mind of a run of the mill lefty Smart Person, once a Health Care Thing was passed, it was as if we had amended the Constitution. Scratch that; it was as if we had, instead, adopted a new, unwritten Constitution. It was a sort of infinite enabling-act allowing for a complete overhaul of our society, to do whatever it takes to cause it to have a National Health Care Thing. Having a National Health Care Thing, in other words, represented a sort of phase transition from our previous, nominally Constitutional arrangement, to our new, glorious National Health Care Thing-having arrangement.
What are the rules of this arrangement? None! There are none. There are no actual rules. You will search in vain for them, to identify them logically, the parameters or boundaries governing what government has now been empowered to do. There are no limitations on what government can or cannot do in the service of building a National Health Care Thing. Rules and limitations are a thing of the past. Now it’s the future. Now, the only rule that matters is to make the National Health Care Thing ‘work’.
What does ‘work’ mean exactly? We’re not quite sure, but we’re working on it. Top men are working on it. Top. Men.
Oh yes, they’re working on it. Figuring it out. Crunching numbers. Wonking. Voxsplaining. Commentating. Tweeting each other. Writing memos. Issuing interpretations and ‘rules’. Giving contracts to each other. All in the service of Making Our National Health Care Thing Work. Because remember, that – and that alone – is the guiding principle of our nation now.
I know, it didn’t seem like any of this was part of the text of the statute of PPACA, or Obamacare. You didn’t think this is what was being agreed to at the time. Nothing like this appears in the actual statute. But remember: text doesn’t matter. What matters is what people thought we were agreeing to when ACA was shoved up our asses democratically passed. What who thought? What Smart People thought of course.
Mind you, I’m not saying it matters what I thought or what you thought. We don’t count. We’re not Smart. No; what matters is what Smart People thought. You know. Smart People. Ezra Klein. Josh “The Journalist Formerly Known As Joshua Micah” Marshall. Sarah Kliff, the “healthcare journalist” (like, that’s literally what she says her job is, a “healthcare journalist”, she “reports on healthcare”, and as far as I can tell that’s like an actual valid career now, like for all we know she’ll do that for the next 50 years, be a “healthcare journalist”).
Notice what all these people are saying now. They’re saying, Wait! None of us who did our noble Work (because it is totally a real job totally worthy of respect) of Talking About Obamacare On Websites thought it limited tax credits to state-exchange-users!
And notice that they actually think that’s a trump card. They think that should settle matters. What they thought. There’s your first clue. It’s not what’s in the bill that’s important. Indeed, that entire talking-point is nothing more than an admission that none of these people actually read the bill, because if they had – if these “healthcare journalists” had actually read the thing they were supposedly doing so much ‘work’ ‘reporting on’ – they’d have seen and understood the problem with the disputed section and, well, actually reported on it.
But why should any of these people read a National Health Care Thing law merely in order to ‘report on’ it? The text itself doesn’t matter. It’s what they and their friends and people they had lunches with thought that’s important. They. Not you. Not me. Not conservative-minded lawyers who might (in what can only be described, in retrospect, as a silly waste of time) actually read the text of the statute. No; what matters is they. Smart People. The Sarah Kliffs of the world.
So what does the law mean, then? We’ll just have to let Smart People tell us. From now on. They’ll figure it out, they’ll make stuff up in their heads, they’ll reverse their prior decisions, they’ll fling money around at some people and tax money away from other people, they’ll come up with all sorts of arbitrary and ad hoc ideas for how our society should be run, and then they’ll kindly tell us.
It’s all part of our new National Health Care Thing that we passed. Not in the text of the thing, but in the idea of the thing, the idea that exists in the collective heads of Smart People. Obamacare was an infinite, empty vessel into which they are now all free and enabled to pour unfettered any ideas or dreams they might have about how our society, with its National Health Care Thing, should be arranged.
This was all clear, of course, from the moment Obamacare was first discussed and shrilly, ferociously, zealously advocated by throngs of people who didn’t know diddly-squat about what the hell was in it. But I’m being unfair; why should they have known what was in it? It was never what was ‘in it’ that mattered in the first place. Or rather, what’s ‘in’ Obamacare, is whatever Smart People want or need to be in Obamacare, at any particular time. That’s how things are going to be from now on.
So now you know, if you didn’t before.
Link:
http://rwcg.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/our-new-unwritten-constitution/
…we’re doomed, good-bye sweet America it was nice while ya lasted.
Re #3 RHT447 :Perhaps one of the most cogent political analyses of the ACA I have read.
Thank you RHT447 for taking the time.
Re #3 RHT447: By the way, I did visit the original via the link but got distracted trying to figure out the most likely spots where fish would be hiding in the photo at the top.
Another good article on Milton Friedman.
“Harry Truman once complained he wanted to find a one-handed economist because he was tired of asking a direct question of those on his economic team, only to have them say, “On the one hand … but on the other hand.”
If there was one hand that noted economist Milton Friedman favored, it was the “invisible hand” of the free market.
Here’s a look at some of Friedman’s most notable quotes:
1.“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
2.“Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
3.“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
4.“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction…”
5.“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”
6.“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
7.“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/31/milton-friedmans-7-notable-quotes/
This Simple Chart Shows Where The Fed’l Gov’t Spent Your Money Last Year. All $3.45 Trillion Of It:
“Incidentally, as a ranking Pentagon official wrote last week – based on the findings of a report commissioned by the Defense Department – Barack Obama’s cuts to the military pose a “serious danger” to the United States.
So here’s the question: Are “we” spending wisely?”
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/164672-simple-chart-shows-fedl-govt-spent-money-last-year-3-45-trillion/