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The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.

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
Free
Influential
Businessman
Purport
Represent
Organisations
Defend
Businessmen
Basic
Undermine
Market
Broader
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Organisation
System
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The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
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What kind of society isn't structured on greed?
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What works for Sweden wouldn't work for France or Germany or Italy. In a small state, you can reach outside for many of your activities. In a homogeneous culture, they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to achieve commonly held goals. But common goals are much harder to come by in larger, more heterogeneous populations.
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The current oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of governmental mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war.
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Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
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We measure poverty by what I believe is a very, very crude concept. We actually measure poverty by trying to get some kind of an estimate of the minimum expenditures on food that are required to maintain health, multiplying that number by three, and saying that's the level of poverty. And it's a very crude, inaccurate arrangement.
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Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.
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The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
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The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.
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The long-range sloution to high unemployment is to increase the incentive for ordinary people to save, invest, work, and employ others. We make it costly for employers to employ people we subsidize people not to go to work We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
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A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.
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The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.
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There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
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When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
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Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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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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China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia.
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Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
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Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
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