Skip to content

Milton Friedman on Free markets and the price system

The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.
The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community
Lecture, 1983
Not yet checkedCite this passage

Where this comes from

Not yet checkedThe wording comes from a secondary compilation and has not yet been checked against the work itself.

Topics

He also said

  1. The emphasis of that talk was that free markets would undermine political centralization and political control. And incidentally, I should say that I was not in Chile as a guest of the government. I was in Chile as the guest of a private organization.
    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript
  2. Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. This is a fundamentally subversive doctrine. If businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders, how are they to know what it is? Can self-selected private individuals decide what the social interest is? Can they decide how great a burden they are justified in placing on themselves or their stockholders to serve that social interest?
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Ch. 8 Monopoly and the Social Responsibility of Business and Labor, p. 133
    Not yet checked
  3. With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
    The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community
    Lecture, 1983
    Not yet checked

Think this quote is wrong, misattributed, or missing context?Report it and it gets fixed, not argued with.