Milton Friedman on Regulation, licensing, and bureaucracy
Another example illustrates Parkinson’s law in agriculture. In 1945 there were 10 million people, either family or hired workers, employed on farms, and the Department of Agriculture had 80,000 employees. In 1992 there were 3 million people employed on farms, and the Department of Agriculture had 122,000 employees.
Context. From a talk at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building in 1993, in a section on “free lunches in the budget”: programs that could be cut to the benefit of nearly everyone. His previous example was the Rural Electrification Administration, which kept going after every farm had electricity and a telephone.
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Milton Friedman, “The Real Free Lunch: Markets and Private Property” (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. 55. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/parkinsons-law-agriculture-department-employees-farm-workers-1993
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He also said
In 1970, 200,000 people were in prison. Today, 1.6 million people are: eight times as many in absolute number, six times as many relative to the increased population. In addition, 2.3 million are on probation and parole. The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous growth in the prison population. There is no light at the end of that tunnel. How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals before we yell "enough"?
Context. From a January 1998 New York Times article, written twenty-five years after President Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” listing the harms he attributes to drug prohibition. Under the heading “Filling the Prisons.” The figures are his, for 1970 and for the time of writing.
It’s Time to End the War on DrugsColumn, 1998, Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2; first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998, as “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs.”Checked against the sourceRead the sourceWe have as many criminals as we have because we have as many laws to break as we have. You take the situation in the United States. We have two million people in prison, four million people who are under parole or under supervision. Why? Because of our mistaken attempt to control what people put in their bodies. Prohibition of so-called drugs, of illegal drugs, is a major reason for all of those prisons. And those are victimless crimes, which should not be crimes.
Context. In a PBS interview for the series Commanding Heights, on the Internet making it easier for criminals to conduct their affairs, where he said one has to distinguish between criminals and criminals.
Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interviewInterview, 2000, PBS, “Where We Stand Today,” interview conducted October 1, 2000Checked against the sourceRead the transcriptThe Rural Electrification Administration was established to bring electricity to farms in the 1930s, when about 80 percent of the farms did not have electricity. When 100 percent of the farms had electricity, the REA shifted to telephone service. Now 100 percent of the farms have telephone service, but the REA goes merrily along. Suppose we abolish the REA, which is just making low-interest loans to concentrated interests, mostly electric and telephone companies. The people of the United States would be better off; they’d save a lot of money that could be used for tax reductions.
Context. From a talk at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building in 1993. He has said that what the country needs is “widespread benefits and concentrated sacrifice,” and gives this as the first of several examples of such free lunches in the federal budget.
The Real Free Lunch: Markets and Private PropertySpeech, 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. 55Checked against the sourceFind the book
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