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Milton Friedman on Regulation, licensing, and bureaucracy

In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
Bureaucracy Scorned
Column, 1975, Newsweek (December 29, 1975); reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Senate, August 26, 1976, p. 28015, under the heading “[From Newsweek, Dec. 29, 1975]”, introduced by Senator Mark Hatfield. Later collected in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist’s Protest (1983)., Congressional Record, August 26, 1976, p. 28015
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He also said

  1. I summarized my impressions by saying that I thought that the best way to understand Israel was to recognize that two Jewish traditions were at war with one another in Israel. One of them was a very recent tradition, a tradition of 100 to 150 years old. That’s the tradition of socialism. … The other tradition, I said, was a tradition that was at least 2,000 years old. It was a tradition that had arisen during the diaspora and as a result of the diaspora. It was a tradition of how you get around government regulations, how you find chinks in controls, how you find those areas in which the free market operates and makes the most of them.
    The Open Mind
    Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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  2. Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist.
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Ch. 11, Social Welfare Measures, p. 187
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  3. Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Today, we have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, including in the bureaucrats the elected members of Congress because that has become a bureaucracy too.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1992, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, The Region, Interview by David Levy, June 1, 1992
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