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Milton Friedman on Free markets and the price system

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Capitalism and Freedom
Book, 1962, Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15
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  1. When the law interferes with people's pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around. They will evade the law, they will break the law, or they will leave the country. Few of us believe in a moral code that justifies forcing people to give up much of what they produce to finance payments to persons they do not know for purposes they may not approve of. When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law—whether the law is enacted in the name of a noble ideal such as equality or in the naked interest of one group at the expense of another. Only fear of punishment, not a sense of justice and morality, will lead people to obey the law.
    Free to Choose
    Book, 1980, Ch. 5 “Created Equal”, p. 145
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  2. The fault is not with the people who run the system, but with the system itself. More fundamentally, the fault is with those of us who are responsible for replacing the economic market with the political market.
    Gammon’s “Black Holes”
    Column, 1977, Newsweek (1977); reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, November 30, 1977, p. 38195, introduced by Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio as “Mr. Friedman’s article on Gammon’s theory of bureaucratic displacement as it appeared in Newsweek.” The reprint gives no issue date, Congressional Record, November 30, 1977, p. 38195
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  3. The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
    Why Government Is the Problem
    Journal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 18
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