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Milton Friedman on Politics, voting, and legislators

If we restrict you to home-grown sugar, it will be two or three times as expensive as if we include sugar from abroad. Which do you really think voters would choose? The people don’t want to pay higher prices. A small group of special interests, which reaps concentrated benefits, wants them to, and that is why sugar in the United States costs several times the world price. The people were never consulted. We are not governed by the people; that’s a myth carried over from Abraham Lincoln’s day. We don’t have government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.

Context. From a talk at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building in 1993. Answering the claim that programs stay in the federal budget because people want them, he has proposed putting to the American people a simple choice: sugar grown mainly on American farms, or sugar that can also come without limit from abroad.

The Real Free Lunch: Markets and Private Property
Speech, 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. 56
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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. 56. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/sugar-special-interests-government-by-the-bureaucrats-1993

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He also said

  1. Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Today, we have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, including in the bureaucrats the elected members of Congress because that has become a bureaucracy too.

    Context. Asked what he would say are the unsolved economic problems of the day, in a 1992 interview for the Minneapolis Fed’s magazine The Region. He answered that the most unresolved problem is how to limit the scope and power of government.

    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1992, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, The Region, Interview by David Levy, June 1, 1992
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  2. The strongest political influence on a legislative body is exercised by special-interest groups of citizens who favor a government program that confers substantial benefits on them, while imposing small costs on a large number of their fellow citizens. … A corollary is that we cannot correct this situation by electing the “right” people to Congress. Once elected, the “right” people will do the wrong things. And they will be pressured to do so by us, in our capacity as members of special-interest groups, even though we elect them in our capacity as members of a majority outraged by the growth in government’s spending and scope.

    Context. From the book’s closing chapter, where the Friedmans set out a numbered list of lessons on how the public will can be translated more effectively into government policy; these are the first two. The ellipsis leaves out one sentence, which calls each such group a corner of an “iron triangle” of beneficiaries, politicians and bureaucrats. The next point says that only the presidency or a constitutional amendment can let the general interest prevail.

    Tyranny of the Status Quo
    Book, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 9 “The Iron Triangle: How to Defeat It”, pp. 165–166 (with Rose D. Friedman)
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  3. Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it and doesn’t just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can’t really afford to eliminate it—not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. So the answer is to allow only pollution that’s worth what it costs, and not any pollution that isn’t worth what it costs.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy, February 1973; reprinted in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Open Court, 1975), p. 16
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