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Milton Friedman on Voluntary exchange

It was, after all, the development of the private market that made possible the original movement from a world of status to a world of voluntary contract. As government has tried to replace the market in one area after another, it has inevitably been driven to restore a world of status.

Context. From the first of two New York Times op-ed essays written at Ely, Vermont, in October 1971, after the August 15 wage-price freeze and as the Nixon administration’s Phase II pay board and price board took over.

Morality and Controls: I
Column, 1971, The New York Times, October 28, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, pp. 38201 to 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”, under the header “[From the New York Times, Oct. 28, 1971]”, Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, pp. 38201–38202
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Milton Friedman, “Morality and Controls: I” (The New York Times, October 28, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, pp. 38201 to 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”, under the header “[From the New York Times, Oct. 28, 1971]”, 1971), Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, pp. 38201–38202. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/from-status-to-contract-and-back-1971

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He also said

  1. In general, I have little sympathy with trade unions. They have done immense harm by restricting access to jobs, denying excluded workers the opportunity to make the most of their abilities, and forcing them to take less satisfactory jobs. Yet surely in the present instance they are right that it is inequitable for the Government retroactively to void contracts freely arrived at. The way to reduce the monopoly power of unions is to remove the special legal immunities they are now granted, not to replace one concentrated power by another.

    Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people.

    Morality and Controls: II
    Column, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202
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  2. A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas.
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 39
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  3. Why is it that on one side of an arbitrary line there was East Germany and on the other side there was West Germany with such a different level of prosperity? It was because West Germany had a system of largely free, private markets—a free lunch. The same free lunch explains the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the prosperity of the United States and Great Britain. These free lunches have been the product of a set of invisible institutions that, as F. A. Hayek emphasized, are a product of human action but not of human intention.

    Context. From a talk at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building in 1993. Turning around the saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” long associated with him, he has just said that there is an extraordinary free lunch: free markets and private property.

    The Real Free Lunch: Markets and Private Property
    Speech, 1993, Remarks at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building, Washington, May 6, 1993 (Cato Policy Report, July/August 1993); reprinted in Toward Liberty: The Idea That Is Changing the World, ed. David Boaz (Cato Institute, 2002), p. 54
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