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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Milton Friedman

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Milton Friedman
Age: 94 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 31
Died: 2006
Died: November 16
Economist
Essayist
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Milton Fridman
Belief
Arguments
Freedom
Libertarian
Free
Economics
Capitalism
Lack
Market
Argument
Underlying
Liberty
Libertarianism

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You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
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With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
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It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.
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The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.
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The Depression, which started in 1929 was rather mild from 1929 to 1930. And, indeed, in my opinion would have been over in 1931 at the latest had it not been that the Federal Reserve followed a policy which led to bank failures, widespread bank failures, and led to a reduction in the quantity of money.
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Speeches by businessmen on social responsibility...may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked.... There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to...engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
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Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.
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Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest.
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What kind of society isn't structured on greed?
Milton Friedman
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A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.
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One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.
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The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
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Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill it's against nature.
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I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.
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What central banks can control is a base and one way they can control the base is via manipulating a particular interest rate, such as a Federal Funds rate, the overnight rate at which banks lend to one another. But they use that control to control what happens to the quantity of money. There is no disagreement.
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No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money.
Milton Friedman
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World trade depends on differences among countries, not similarities. Different countries are in different stages of development. It is appropriate for them to have different patterns, different policies for ecology, labor standards, and so forth.
Milton Friedman
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The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system.
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The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.
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Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.
Milton Friedman