Milton Friedman on Freedom and equality
You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others. And what ultimately happens when you aim for equality is that A and B decide what C should do for D, except that they take a bit of commission off on the way.”
Milton Friedman Speaks: The Role of Government in a Free Society
Speech, 1978
Where this comes from
Not yet checkedThe wording comes from a secondary compilation and has not yet been checked against the work itself.
Topics
He also said
It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.
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 ChooseBook, 1980, Ch. 5 “Created Equal”, p. 145Not yet checkedIn my opinion, a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. A society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.
Think this quote is wrong, misattributed, or missing context?Report it and it gets fixed, not argued with.