In Praise Of The Happy Warrior
R.I.P.
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Breaking News | Featured Stories — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
And I am stunned.
I am stunned because Milton Friedman possessed vibrant ideas. I thought that those ideas would keep their possessor immortal even as they helped society win prosperity and freedom.
I am stunned because Milton Friedman possessed a vibrant and cheerful personality. I thought that such a personality would allow him to remain with us, ever-encouraging his friends and his country to greater accomplishments.
I am stunned because the overbearing regulatory state continues to defy enlightenment and reason and needs someone with a strong and yet charming personality to demonstrate to it the error of its ways. Milton Friedman had such a personality--and the knowledge to back it up. Who else, after all, could have made a discussion concerning the creation of a pencil so interesting:
That's right. A lecture concerning a mundane topic like the creation of a pencil was made dazzling and fascinating by Milton Friedman. Imagine what he could do with questions and debate regarding matters of great import and consequence.
Milton Friedman was blessed with so much. A loving wife, Rose, who is now left to cherish his memory alone. A loving family who learned so much from his example. Professional accomplishments that awe and inspire. A legacy of freedom he has imparted to his country and the world. Several lifetimes have been lived by this one man.
And yet, he died too soon. The battle for freedom is not yet won. The regulatory state remains fixed in all of its obnoxiousness. Too many people deride capitalism instead of seeing it as the liberating and supremely equitable force that it is. The cause of liberty could have continued to use Milton Friedman's advocacy, his knowledge, his cheerful willingness to engage himself--immerse himself--in the battle of ideas.
We are bereft a friend, a teacher and a mighty ally. We shall try to carry on without him.
But it just won't be the same. Milton Friedman has left behind an overwhelming legacy. No one can take his place.
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In Friedman's example is that the "raw materials" of that kind of market-economic thinking are ubiquitous and available to us all. A couple of days ago I ended a thread here at RedState with Neil Stevens by pointing out that I had purchased an IBM eServer for just $75 dollars on eBay. (It's still working beautifully, BTW.)
Yes, it is true that I knew where to look and that I was hungry to find a machine that would do what I needed and I had a lot of personal motivation to do it, but if you look at that machine you will find a tremendous wealth of things about it that are just as important as Dr. Friedman's example with that simple pencil. Except that this is no ordinary pencil. This is a symmetric multiprocessor server with twin 1.2 GHz Pentium IIIs inside it.
We are going to use that machine to run either our print services or our web services (we haven't decided which yet) but the astonishing thing is that it is literally a multi-thousand dollar machine when purchased new but that will still serve for several more years at a very, very low price for us. And all of that accumulated wealth is sitting there as the direct result of the theories promulgated by folks like Milton Friedman. God Bless Him, because without people who had his unique insight into the ways people across the world can effectively concentrate their value to produce more value and wealth, it would never have been possible for us.
Dr. Friedman's thinking is literally what makes the future possible for people who aspire.
Truly one of the greatest humans who ever lived. I can think of few others whose contribution to the well being of all was so great. As sad as I was when Ronald Reagan died, I am even sadder today. There would have been no Ronald Reagan as we knew him without Milton Friedman.
Not to mention that he inspired me to study economics and become a conservative.
RIP Dr. Friedman. Gone but never forgotten.
I read "Free to Choose" in 1977 as a college sophomore, It spurred me to change my major to Economics. Through the years his many ideas became accepted my more and more people. Monetarist policies have helped to create a long and nearly uninterrupted period of growth since the mid 1980's.
Even School choice might someday soon become a reality.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Free to choose did not come out until 1980, it was another of his books, (The memory is the first to go)
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
to this world for which we should be grateful. It is relatively easy to sow the wrong ideas in the minds of men, but often hard to convince them of what's right. Few people were able to use ideas to such a positive effect as prof. Friedman. He may have had a libertarian streak which might have been uncomfortable with those concerned with certain moral topics, but his economics and economic policy were unsurpassed. He lived a long life, but every lover of freedom, as well as every economist (sadly these groups don't overlap perfectly) should be sad at his passing. I am, doubly so. All the more so since he didn't live to see the widespread implementation of school vouchers, which would have added an impressive victory to his already long list. But with time and hard work, that will come too.
RIP, prof. Milton Friedman.
Served your nation and world honorably. Unfortunately for us, the Republican party needs YOU now as much as ever.
www.fairtax.org
Sick of Government Expansion? Liberty-Minded Republican? Check This Out... Republican Liberty Caucus!!!
www.rlc.org http://www.republicanliberty.org/
The Friedman Foundation, established in Indianapolis by Milton and Rose Friedman, continues the unfinished work for school vouchers.
Ten years ago, I worked for then-Mayor Steve Goldsmith in Indianapolis, helping to implement Professor Friedman's ideas about competition -- in this instance, competition in the provision of municipal services. It worked wonderfully, with aggregate savings in excess of $500 million.
Milton Friedman was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th Century.
Bellinghamster
Probably no other single person has more influenced my personal politics than Milton Friedman. This news is an enormous bummer.
-exits
A letter from Friedman:
"Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic.
This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence," - Milton Friedman, in a 1990 open letter to Bill Bennett, big government conservative.
* from a post on Sullivan's blog
But not everything in life boils down to economics. I read his book Free to Choose in college when it came out and much of it was excellent. However, social policy as pertains to drugs is much more than "economics" and so I would say he was out of his element saying this in his letter to Bill Bennett.
We need only look at centuries of Chinese history to see why that would never work.
This is a sad day for freedom.
Thank you Dr. Friedman, especially for your neat phrase free to choose.