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Milton Friedman on Capitalism and socialism

I summarized my impressions by saying that I thought that the best way to understand Israel was to recognize that two Jewish traditions were at war with one another in Israel. One of them was a very recent tradition, a tradition of 100 to 150 years old. That’s the tradition of socialism. … The other tradition, I said, was a tradition that was at least 2,000 years old. It was a tradition that had arisen during the diaspora and as a result of the diaspora. It was a tradition of how you get around government regulations, how you find chinks in controls, how you find those areas in which the free market operates and makes the most of them.
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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  1. There is one simple way to end the energy crisis and the gasoline shortage tomorrow—and I mean tomorrow and not six months from now, not six years from now. Eliminate all controls on the price of crude oil and other petroleum products. The gasoline lines would melt faster than the snows of winter.
    Blaming the Obstetrician
    Column, 1979, Newsweek (June 4, 1979); reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, June 7, 1979, pp. 14007 to 14008, introduced by Representative G. William Whitehurst of Virginia, who describes it as “an article by Milton Friedman, which appeared in the June 4, 1979, issue of Newsweek”, Congressional Record, June 7, 1979, pp. 14007 to 14008
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  2. 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
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  3. The free market has been around for thousands and thousands of years. The theory of the free market in a systematic, organized way dates back to Adam Smith in 1776, but the free market doesn’t.
    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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