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Milton Friedman on Politics, voting, and legislators

The essence of the problem is that once we begin to allow exceptions for special interests, we move from a system of private arrangements to a political system where everyone’s freedom is limited and government becomes a matter of trying to balance those interests. Nobody really wins under these terms.
Interview with Milton Friedman
Interview, 1973, Playboy
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  1. Well, I have always argued that you will not solve problems by electing the right man to the White House. Certainly not by electing the wrong man. … The only way you will ever solve problems, in my opinion, and move in the direction we want to move is by making it in the political interest of the wrong people to do the right thing.
    The Open Mind
    Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
    Checked against the sourceWatch it
  2. 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
  3. There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Preface (1982 edition), p. ix
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