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Milton Friedman on Free markets and the price system

"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
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He also said

  1. 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
    Checked against the sourceRead the original
  2. The difficulty of exercising “social responsibility” illustrates, of course, the great virtue of private competitive enterprise—it forces people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult for them to “exploit” other people for either selfish or unselfish purposes. They can do good—but only at their own expense.
    A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
    Column, 1970, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, Section SM, p. 17
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript
  3. Fundamentally, the Soviet Union is a market economy, but it’s a distorted market economy, because the extraordinarily great role of government forces the market into channels which are not efficient and not effective, and so much of its power is wasted in simply overcoming the bureaucratic mess of the government. That’s why the Soviet Union has such a low standard of life.
    The Open Mind
    Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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