Silly Little Country

Another Friedman Reminiscence

EclectEcon points at this and I agree with his assessment. I especially like the description of the teaching style:

Peltzman describes his experience, "He came in on the first day and said "I read this in the newspaper" and would ask the class, "What do you think about it?" I'm thinking, when are we going to get to the economics? This goes on for two whole quarters, and once it's over I still wonder what is going on. Then, one day I got up at 2 in the afternoon (let's just say there was a night wasted.) Groggily I turned on the radio, to hear some guy talking about something. I asked myself what is the model that leads from the premise to the conclusion, and what is the evidence that I would need to validate what this guy is saying. And all of a sudden it hit me! Here I was, groggy after a late night out, reacting to the world the way an economist reacts. That's what he taught you."

As someone who finds John Stuart Mill a towering hero, I find the name of one of Canada's parties, and the current use of the term 'liberal' in US politics, unhelpful. This is nicely reflected in this passage:

He said in a television interview "I call myself a liberal, in the true sense of liberal, in the sense in which it means of and pertaining to freedom." Individual freedom was always of central concern to Friedman, it motivated much of his work in economics and most if not all of his work in public policy. Indeed he concisely summed up his political philosophy, "Freedom is the ultimate goal, and the individual is the ultimate entity in the society." This philosophy translates into the simple proposition that in general people are able make better decisions concerning their own welfare than the state is able to make.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 1:32 PM