SansPretense

In the words of the very eloquent Rachel Lucas, “I think I just ovulated.” Well, there is a few minor complications to that statement as it pertains to me, but anyway…

As I was procrastinating the tedious process of making nanoparticles for the thousandth time in the last four years, I found myself on Small Dead Animals. Kate posted a video of an interview of economist Milton Friedman from the 70s. I had never really heard of Friedman before, except maybe in passing from people a lot smarter than me, but I found this video and transcript not only very fascinating, but the way he expresses his points very refreshing:

Notice, even though the interviewer seems to disagree with Friedman, he seemed to be very sincerely an admirer and interested (non-dismissive) of what he was saying. I haven’t seen that too often from the mainstream media, these days. That’s sort of off topic; let’s take a look at what Friedman has to say. (More commentary after the fold)

On whether or not he’s a conservative:

I never characterize myself as a conservative economist. As I understand the English language, conservative means conserving, keeping things as they are. I don’t want to keep things as they are. The true conservatives today are the people who are in favor of ever bigger government. The people who call themselves liberals today — the New Dealers — they are the true conservatives, because they want to keep going on the same path we’re going on. I would like to dismantle that. I call myself a liberal in the true sense of liberal, in the sense in which it means (inaudible) and pertaining to freedom.

Indeed, he is correct. Friedman, Rush Limbaugh, George Washington, and American conservatives in general tend to be more along the lines of classical liberals. However, American Liberalism today is more along the lines of socialism (or socialism-lite if you’re a moderate liberal). Later in the interview, he expands on this theme:

FRIEDMAN: …I think the remarkable thing, the thing that needs to be explained, is not why we’ve had a movement towards collectivism and towards more government control, because that’s been the natural state of mankind for thousands of years. The remarkable thing in my opinion, from an intellectual point of view, is how you ever managed to get a century or a century and a half in which the dominant philosophy was the opposite. That’s the exception.

HEFFNER: But it’s so fascinating to hear you say that this has been the natural way in which men have moved since the beginning of time — toward collectivism — then why do you describe that brief period, that century or century and a half, as the more normal, the more appropriate state?

FRIEDMAN: Oh, I don’t. Oh, you’ve used two terms.

HEFFNER: Fair enough.

FRIEDMAN: You said more normal, more appropriate. It’s a state I prefer. It’s a state that I think would be very much superior to what we’re heading into. It’s a state I think the ordinary citizen of this country would find superior, but it’s not the normal, natural state. Suppose you take a broad view of history for a moment, and of geography. You cannot find a date in history at which the greater part of the human race was not living in a condition of tyranny, misery, and decay. Take it right now. The bulk of the human race is not living in a free world. The bulk of the human race is living in totalitarian or dictatorial governments. Can you name any date in history in which that wasn’t true? Now, more extreme — take any place in geography. Put your finger on the globe and go back over time. I don’t believe there’s a place where you can put your finger on the globe where mankind has for most of human history lived except in tyranny and misery. You had a few brief occasions, Greece in the fifth century BC — and even there it’s mixed because you had a slave society. It was a free society for the upper classes, not for the community. You had a brief period during the Renaissance in Italy. You had a — and then you have the latter part of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century — mostly the nineteenth century, first part of the twentieth century — those are the exceptions, not the rule.

HEFFNER: Then you’re the one who seems to want to interfere with the natural order.

FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. I do.

HEFFNER: Then why do we call you a conservative?

FRIEDMAN: Because I’m not. Because I’m a liberal. I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing. And it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to try to do them, you not only may make them — to do something about them — you not only may make them worse, but you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere. You know, another answer to your question as to why you seem to have the drift to collectivism is along these lines. The argument for collectivism for government doing something is simple. Anybody can understand it. If there’s something wrong, pass a law. If somebody is in trouble, get Mr. X to help him out. The argument for a free — for voluntary cooperation for a free market is not nearly so simple. It says, you know, if you allow people to cooperate voluntarily and don’t interfere with them, indirectly through the operation of the market, they will improve matters more than you can improve it directly by appointing somebody. That’s a subtle argument, and it’s hard for people to understand. And, moreover, people think that when you argue that way you’re arguing for selfishness, for greed. That’s utter nonsense. The people who are in positions of power in a political hierarchy are also selfish and greedy. Mankind is selfish and greedy. And one of the interesting features about the nineteenth century that we were talking about -­I wonder if you realize that there is no century in human history in which charitable and eleemosynary activity has been as widespread on as large a scale as it was in the nineteenth century.

…

HEFFNER: Yes, but it interests me that you just said that mankind is selfish and greedy. And that has always been the battle cry of those who have said; therefore, we must impose controls upon them.

FRIEDMAN: Therefore, we have to put power into the hands of other selfish and greedy men. Now I want to apologize for what I said. The great bulk of mankind. There are always conspicuous exceptions, not everybody. And also for each person there is an exception. People are selfish and greedy in one aspect of their activity. They are unselfish and generous in another.

HEFFNER: No, I understand that, but -­

FRIEDMAN: I don’t mean to be making a -­

HEFFNER: I understand, but again that is the philosophic basis of the argument that government must step in.

FRIEDMAN: But it’s a false argument, because it assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men. But government is an institution whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men, get in a position of controlling them. Look at the record of government. Where are these philosopher kings that Plato supposedly was trying to develop?

HEFFNER: Limited to that Athens you were talking about.

FRIEDMAN: Right. Well, they never got power…

Read/Watch the rest of the interview. He goes into why minimum wage actually hurts the people it was meant to help, and he also discusses why Social Security is a bad system. He uses it as an example of how the politicians lied to the people about the economic reality of it because they wrongly thought it would be for the best.

I think his point how modern “Progressives” being really regressive in their ideas is an important one. Looking at history, we’ve always had the government step in and control people through both social and economic means - often under the excuse that it is for their own good. None it worked. Marxism is an attempt to try the same thing again, just in a different form. It’s like the man who makes wings out of feathers and flaps them in an effort to fly off of the ground, only to discover that it doesn’t work. Instead of trying the new experimental designs of the Wright brothers or the semi-new design of a hot-air balloon, he decides to just modify his feathers, floppy, wings by making them bigger and jumping off the cliff to gain speed since the Wright’s design worked better with speed.

Marxism attempts, once again, to control people through limiting freedoms and eliminating ownership of property. It places the power in the hands of the people “elected” to run a government (or in a full democracy - among all the people equally). History has shown that concentrating the power like that just provides a means for tyranny to creep in under the slogan “for the good of the people.” This is just as equally true when the people have the power to make those decisions. It never fails that the most eloquent, charismatic person gets his views across to the masses in much more effective ways than the non-charismatic. Sometimes, this results in bad people getting the support of the masses, even though their reasoning is fundamentally flawed or else they’re just not a good person at all. That’s the reason we set up a republic in this country, instead of a direct democracy: to try to prevent “popular” ideas or people from running away with the government by filtering them though people we trust to let us know what is best considering the available information. Marxism isn’t anything new. It’s an old idea. It’s the idea that most people are selfish, greedy, and stupid, so if we give them the material things they crave, then they’ll just be happy with what they have and not want more (or at least will not cause trouble).

The Free Market and the American experiment in capitalism and liberty, however, was a revolutionary idea. From the very first phrase founded in the Constitution - “We the People” - to the uncompromising declarations within the Bill of Rights - especially the First Amendment - our system was intentionally designed to give the People maximum freedom and potential while limiting the size of the government. And, when we’re not facing judges legislating from the bench, our system of checks and balances work pretty well. No, it’s not perfect, but up until now, no one has come up with a better system (and have been able to present proof that their system is better).

Anyway, go read/watch the rest of the interview. It’s very enlightening, especially considering the warnings he’s raised about the country being on a road to serfdom haven’t exactly been heeded. The issues of the 70s are still alive today.