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Milton Friedman: Singlehandedly responsible for libertarianism

by Micah Tillman

Or so Peter Goodman's NYTimes article ("Reconsidering Milton Friedman") might lead you to believe.

Furthermore, it seems that the experts cited in Goodman's article believe libertarianism has been refuted by the current financial crisis. That despite Jason Lewis's convincing (to me, at least) argument this past Thursday that government involvement was a cause of said crisis (or would at least make it worse, in the long run).

But what do I know? I'm neither an historian nor an economist.

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Comments

Thanks for pointing the NYT article out, MT.

I think the problem with such articles is that they don't spend any space evaluating the weight and validity of the various statements made.

For example, the Hernando de Soto quote does not tell us how much of a disagreement his tweak of Friedman (and libertarians) on income inequality was. However, the effect of the quote works to make the point, "Prominent property rights advocate disagrees with Friedman."

Then you have lines such as, "Mr. Friedman would remain in the policy wilderness until the rise of President Reagan. Then, his notions about rolling back government took on the force of dogma."

This suggests that Friedman was not well regarded UNTIL he took up a partisan appointment. Moreover, upon this appointment, his argumentation became DOGMA, we are told.

Whether intentional, or simply a result of space-constraints, the article casts suspicion on Friedman's credibility without a full airing of the facts.

# posted at by Kevin D. Rollins