Skip to content

Milton Friedman on Intellectuals, the press, and public opinion

In one sense, it is poetic justice that my colleagues and I at colleges and universities should now be suffering under the bureaucratic lash. For we have done more than any other group to produce a climate of opinion favorable to big government. So long as affirmative-action programs were directed at greedy businesses and grasping trade unions, academia for the most part cheered. And even now that its own ox is being gored, the typical reaction is that the academic world is “different.”
Bureaucracy Scorned
Column, 1975, Newsweek (December 29, 1975); reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Senate, August 26, 1976, p. 28015, under the heading “[From Newsweek, Dec. 29, 1975]”, introduced by Senator Mark Hatfield. Later collected in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist’s Protest (1983)., Congressional Record, August 26, 1976, p. 28015
Checked against the sourceRead the originalCite this passage

Where this comes from

Checked against the sourceThe wording was checked against the work itself.

Topics

He also said

  1. The affirmative-action program is one of those bureaucratic monstrosities that have become all too familiar: noble objectives, ignoble results.
    Bureaucracy Scorned
    Column, 1975, Newsweek (December 29, 1975); reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Senate, August 26, 1976, p. 28015, under the heading “[From Newsweek, Dec. 29, 1975]”, introduced by Senator Mark Hatfield. Later collected in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist’s Protest (1983)., Congressional Record, August 26, 1976, p. 28015
    Checked against the sourceRead the original
  2. "The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business."
    The Tyranny of Control
    Television, 1980, PBS, vol. 2
    Not yet checkedFind it at the source
  3. In a reaction that has become only too familiar, the big-government coalition has been threatening dire consequences if Jarvis-Gann passes: police and fire departments “crippled,” bond issues in “default,” “bankrupt schools.” The opposition is preparing to launch a major media blitz to be financed in large part by big business, which apparently has let fear of Sacramento trigger its unerring instinct for self-destruction.
    A Progress Report
    Column, 1978, Newsweek (April 10, 1978); reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, April 4, 1978, pp. 8709 to 8710, introduced by Representative John H. Rousselot of California, who describes it as “his byline article which appeared in the April 10, 1978 issue of Newsweek”, Congressional Record, April 4, 1978, pp. 8709 to 8710
    Checked against the sourceRead the original

Think this quote is wrong, misattributed, or missing context?Report it and it gets fixed, not argued with.