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Milton Friedman on Politics, voting, and legislators

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
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  1. I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile under the title "The Fragility of Freedom." The essence of the talk was that freedom was a very fragile thing and that what destroyed it more than anything else was central control; that in order to maintain freedom, you had to have free markets, and that free markets would work best if you had political freedom. So it was essentially an anti-totalitarian talk.
    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. I've asked people who were in favor of free markets and free enterprise, people who formerly had been of a different view, what caused them to change their mind. I'm talking particularly not about economists, not about professionals, but generally ordinary people, most of whom had been socialist or in favor of government control at one time and had come over to free markets. And two names have come up over and over again: Hayek on the one hand, The Road to Serfdom from Hayek, and Ayn Rand on the other, Atlas Shrugged and her other books.
    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “On Friedrich Hayek and the Mont Pelerin meeting,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript
  3. The big difference between government coercion and private markets is that government can use coercion to make an exchange in which A benefits and B loses. But in the market, if A and B come to a voluntary agreement, it's because both of them are better off.
    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “The Economic Logic Behind Black Markets,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript

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