"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."  Milton Friedman

Apparently Friedman seriously considered becoming an actuary but due to the Great Depression climate he decided to approach economics with a specialization in mathematics. Meanwhile in the next generation, Sowell, a proclaimed Marxist for about a decade, went on to publish tons of books on societal and economic issues. Before supporting free market ideology, Sowell actively challenged Friedman’s stances and didn’t even support him until he interned for the government one summer. I’m incredibly intrigued by how charismatic they both are, their unique perspectives, and how simple they make every topic appear both in YouTube videos and in their books. Any fans or critics in here?

You have probably seen it. Milton believes when people spend their own money on themselves they are most careful. When people spend others money on other people they are least efficient.

Basically when you benefit or feel the consequences you are more careful and when you don’t you are less careful.

Summary: https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-four-different-ways-to-spend-money-by-milton-friedman/

Obviously government spending is spending other people’s money on other people, which is what socialists want. Do socialist disagree that this is the worst form of spending?If so how/why?

If you want government to pay for core needs (school, healthcare, unemployment, etc) wouldn’t it be better for the government to give the money to people to carefully spend on themselves? In other words publicly funded, privately implemented. Example: school vouchers

Edit: Many have pointed out that capitalism has the worst form of spending as well. This is true. The point is, it is always true for government, it is possibly true with private spending. On balance then you would want to tilt toward the more efficient item. Additionally, i have also seen socialist saying that money shouldn't exist and it is brought up that many societies existed prior to money. Great. None of thee examples have the modern conveniences that modern life has. Socialist say that we would continue to work because we would want to provide for the common good seems to fall flat. We have shortage of trade workers, retail workers, healthcare workers despite rising wages. It's hard to imagine that eliminating a salary would increase the prevelence of these workers.

Wishing you all well!

I keep getting spammed it anytime I try to argue with someone who is libright.

from wikipedia...

Rothbard was critical of monetarist economist Milton Friedman. In his polemic "Milton Friedman Unraveled", he called Friedman a "statist", a "favorite of the establishment", a friend of and "apologist" for Richard Nixon and a "pernicious influence" on public policy.[57][58] Rothbard said that libertarians should scorn rather than celebrate Friedman's academic prestige and political influence. Noting that Rothbard has "been nasty to me and my work", Friedman responded to Rothbard's criticism by calling him a "cult builder and a dogmatist".

I am very much on the side of milton friedman, i like that he responded to rothbard saying exactly what he ought to be called, a CULTIST!

tell me what you think about these two and their opinions about each other

I'm curious if any authors have written on the story of these two "economists," who I regard as little more than propagandists for the ruling class.

There is very little in the way of content on the web out there taking apart their theories, but yet the institutes in their name (under the funding umbrella of ALEC), are putting out tons of favorable content all the time. It seems like serious academics have just disregarded their work altogether, seeing it as a byproduct of the time it came from.

But I do grow concerned for the uninitiated who stumble across their nonsense and take it seriously.

I'm speaking about Friedman's graphs in this video.

He's juxtaposing two functions, one of CPI and and other "quantity of money per unit of output". This latter unit is unclear, so I tried to find how Friedman actually went about measuring it. Someone was kind enough to cite it in a stack exchange post:

https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/42873/what-exactly-is-quantity-of-money-per-unit-of-output

So if I'm not mistaken, the quantity of money per unit of output is M2 divided by real GDP.. so M2 / RGDP.

Except.. how does one measure real GDP? The answer, of course, is that you take nominal GDP, herein NGDP, and divide it by the GDP deflator, D. So the equation above becomes M2 / (NGDP / D ) = M2 * D / NGDP.

Except.. D is a measurement of inflation. It's not exactly CPI, but it covers much of the same ground as CPI, and it's easy to see that these two variables are strongly correlated.

So.. did Friedman really just point out that when you take two functions, both heavily weighted by inflation coefficients, they correlate? Isn't this a totally uninteresting thing to even note? Isn't it deeply flawed reasoning, even misleading, to suggest this correlation has meaning other than "similar things are similar"?

Some say right wing, conservative, libertarian, but that all sounds misleading. Is there a better way to identify?

I really wish that Robert would do an episode on Milton Friedman or one focusing on the Chicago School of Economics.

I'm listening to the audiobook "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein and really think an episode or two should be dedicated to Friedman.

Milton Friedman Money Mischief

• There was an island discovered in 1900 that the natives were using big round stones as money
• We take pieces of paper as payment because we think others will too
• The pieces of paper have value because everyone thinks they have value (just like the people on the island thought the stones had value)
  • Everyone thinks they have value because in everybody's experience, they have had value
• "Not worth a Continental" is a reminder of what can happen when people decide it doesn't have value anymore
• Throughout history, it takes very high rates of inflation (double digits) that persist for years before people stop using the currency.
  • When they do stop using it, they do not revert to straight barter. They adopt substitute currencies - Gold, Silver, Copper, paper money that can't be overissued or foreign currencies
  • Liquor and Cigarettes were even currency after WWII in some areas
• Other forms of money throughout history include salt, silk, shells, furs, dried fish, tobacco, feathers, and stones
• Before 1971, every major currency from time had been linked directly or indirectly to a commodity
  • Departures did occur but usually only during crisis
  • Countries typically went off their commodity standards (Gold, Silver, Copper, etc.) and onto a paper standard when they were at war
• Since 1971, no major currency has a link to a commodity
• So, what is money? Money is whatever is generally accepted in exchange for goods and services
• David Hume "It is of no manner of consequence, with regard to the domestic happiness of a state, whether money be in a greater or less quantity" "What matters is changes in the quantity of money and in the conditions of demand for money."
• Walter Bagehot "Money is a power which may grow, but cannot be constructed."
• Irving Fisher "Irredeemable paper money has almost invariably proved a curse to the country employing it."
• 12 people in the United State determine the quantity of money
• The federal reserve can determine the quantity of money (how much the public holds), but the public determines the demand for money
• Substantial changes in prices or nominal income are almost always the results of changes in the nominal supply of money, rarely the result of changes in the demand for money
• Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it i

So many great, famous, influential libertarian economists from the 20th century and I can't think of any modern ones

>"The success of the article was not because the arguments were sound or powerful, but rather because people desperately wanted to believe."

El exito del articulo no fue porque los argumentos fueran solidos o poderosos, si no mas bien porque la gente desesperadamente queria creer.

>The idea of focusing totally on making money, and forgetting about any concerns for employees, customers or society seemed like a promising avenue worth exploring, regardless of the argumentation

La idea de concentrarse solamente en hacer dinero, y olvidarse acerca de cualquier preocupacion por los empleados, los clientes o la sociedad parecia ser un camino que valia la pena explorar, mas alla de la argumentacion.

>Underneath impenetrable jargon and abstruse mathematics is the reality that whole intellectual edifice of the famous article rests on the same false assumption as Professor Friedman’s article, namely, that an organization is a legal fiction which doesn’t exist and that the organization’s money is owned by the stockholders.

Abajo de la jerga impenetrable y las matematicas dificiles de entender esta la realidad de que toda la edificacion intelectual del famoso articulo descansa sobre la misma falsa asuncion que la del articulo del Profesor Friedman, a saber, que una organizacion es una ficcion legal que no existe y que el dinero de esa organizacion le pertenece a los accionistas

>Politics also lent support. Ronald Reagan was elected in the US in 1980 with his message that government is “the problem”. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979. These leaders preached “economic freedom” and urged a focus on making money as “the solution”.

Los politicos tambien prestaron su apoyo. Ronald Reagan fue elegido en los EEUU en 1980 con su mensaje de que el gobierno es "el problema". En el reino unido en 1979, Margaret Thatcher se convirtio en primer ministra. Esos lideres predicaron la "libertad economica" y apuraron a que se concentren en hacer dinero como "la solucion"

>The disastrous consequences…

>So for a time, it looked as though the magic of shareholder value was working. But once the financial tricks that were used to support it were uncovered, the underlying reality became apparent. The decline that Friedman and other sensed in 1970 turned out to be real and persistent. The rate of return on assets and on invested capital of US firms declined from 1965 to 2009 by three-quarters, as shown by the Shift Index, a study of 20,000 US

Here's some context: Friedman says that without inequality how does a group of people try to socialize their viewpoint, let's say that viewpoint goes against socialist ideals or ways of thinking. At least in an unequal, capitalist society you can garner the support of people more wealthy than you who have influence in government, media, news etc. However in a socialist society media is largely state or collectively owned (I would assume), so you you cannot appeal to wealthy people to spread your ideas because most people don't have much more wealth or influence than yourself. Now if you try to appeal to people that work in government, even those that are higher up, they can only maintain their position of influence and wealth in government (at least more wealth than non government employees) if they continue to support socialist ideals/worldviews. Surely a high ranking bureaucrat in government cannot use his or her wealth and influence to spread your non socialist viewpoints to the public. What if there is a third way that you want people to know about? One that is not capitalist or socialist, does living in a socialist society prevent such viewpoints from gaining mass attention? That's why Friedman says inequality is a requirement for democracy, I don't know how to grapple with this. Hoping someone can shed light on this for me. According to Friedman's argument socialist society would have to be the end of history, the end of any dissenting views that deviate from socialism because it would be impossible to disseminate such viewpoints without the ability to influence hearts and minds.

Milton Friedman Money Mischief

• There was an island discovered in 1900 that the natives were using big round stones as money
• We take pieces of paper as payment because we think others will too
• The pieces of paper have value because everyone thinks they have value (just like the people on the island thought the stones had value)
  • Everyone thinks they have value because in everybody's experience, they have had value
• "Not worth a Continental" is a reminder of what can happen when people decide it doesn't have value anymore
• Throughout history, it takes very high rates of inflation (double digits) that persist for years before people stop using the currency.
  • When they do stop using it, they do not revert to straight barter. They adopt substitute currencies - Gold, Silver, Copper, paper money that can't be overissued or foreign currencies
  • Liquor and Cigarettes were even currency after WWII in some areas
• Other forms of money throughout history include salt, silk, shells, furs, dried fish, tobacco, feathers, and stones
• Before 1971, every major currency from time had been linked directly or indirectly to a commodity
  • Departures did occur but usually only during crisis
  • Countries typically went off their commodity standards (Gold, Silver, Copper, etc.) and onto a paper standard when they were at war
• Since 1971, no major currency has a link to a commodity
• So, what is money? Money is whatever is generally accepted in exchange for goods and services
• David Hume "It is of no manner of consequence, with regard to the domestic happiness of a state, whether money be in a greater or less quantity" "What matters is changes in the quantity of money and in the conditions of demand for money."
• Walter Bagehot "Money is a power which may grow, but cannot be constructed."
• Irving Fisher "Irredeemable paper money has almost invariably proved a curse to the country employing it."
• 12 people in the United State determine the quantity of money
• The federal reserve can determine the quantity of money (how much the public holds), but the public determines the demand for money
• Substantial changes in prices or nominal income are almost always the results of changes in the nominal supply of money, rarely the result of changes in the demand for money
• Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it i