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Milton Friedman on Intellectuals, the press, and public opinion

The homogeneity and provincialism of the New York intellectual community made them pushovers in discussions about Goldwater’s views. They had cliche answers but only to their self-created straw men. To exaggerate only slightly, they had never talked to anyone who really believed, and had thought deeply about, views drastically different from their own. As a result, when they heard real arguments instead of caricatures, they had no answers, only amazement that such views could be expressed by someone who had the external characteristics of being a member of the intellectual community, and that such views could be defended with apparent cogency.

Context. From a 1974 talk to University of Chicago faculty, recalling the meetings in New York in the fall of 1964 at which he argued Barry Goldwater’s case, during Goldwater’s presidential campaign, before groups from academia, the media, finance and the foundations.

Schools at Chicago
Speech, 1974, Remarks at the 54th annual Board of Trustees Dinner for Faculty, University of Chicago, January 9, 1974; The University of Chicago Record, As quoted in Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 370
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Milton Friedman, “Schools at Chicago” (Remarks at the 54th annual Board of Trustees Dinner for Faculty, University of Chicago, January 9, 1974; The University of Chicago Record, 1974), As quoted in Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 370. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/cliche-answers-only-self-created-straw-men-1974

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He also said

  1. What happened was the Great Depression, which changed people’s views. Before the Great Depression, the general public vision was that the government was a necessary evil and that you should rely on the private market. The Great Depression was wrongly attributed—in my opinion, it was produced by government mismanagement—to a failure of the capitalist system, and public attitudes changed drastically as a result. From regarding the government as a necessary evil the public came to regard the government as the answer to all problems, which set in motion, beginning with FDR’s New Deal, a process under which government has been growing incrementally from then on.

    Context. Asked why federal spending stayed small relative to the economy for most of the country’s history, although the institutions and incentives had always been there, and what changed it.

    Friedman on the Surplus
    Interview, 2001, Interview by Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge, January 17, 2001; adapted in Hoover Digest 2001 No. 2
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  2. Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it and doesn’t just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can’t really afford to eliminate it—not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. So the answer is to allow only pollution that’s worth what it costs, and not any pollution that isn’t worth what it costs.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy, February 1973; reprinted in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Open Court, 1975), p. 16
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  3. The negative lesson is that we must beware of intolerance if we’re going to be really effective in persuading people. The writings of both Rand and Mises—and much libertarian literature—take for granted that hard questions have easy answers, that it’s possible to know something about the real world, to derive substantive conclusions, from purely a priori principles.

    Context. After criticizing Mises’s praxeology and Rand’s derivation of everything from A=A, while saying that nothing lessens his admiration for what both did to promote liberty and free markets.

    Say 'No' to Intolerance
    Speech, 1991, Liberty, vol. 4, no. 6 (July 1991), p. 18
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