“How to Stay Free” in Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE Part 6 of 7 “If you compare the conditions of people in a place like Singapore with the conditions of people in a place like Red China, or for that matter, Indonesia, you will see that the economic freedom is a very important component of total freedom”

In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount.  I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

In this episode “How to Stay Free” Friedman makes the statement “What we need is widespread public recognition that the central government should be limited to its basic functions: defending the nation against foreign enemies, preserving order at home, and mediating our disputes. We must come to recognize that voluntary cooperation through the market and in other ways is a far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to the government.”

Milton Friedman in this episode makes this point, ” If you compare the conditions of people in a place like Singapore with the conditions of people in a place like Red China, or for that matter, Indonesia, you will see that the economic freedom is a very important component of total freedom”
Pt 6
Lawrence E. Spivak: Milton, suppose I agree with almost everything you say and say it would be wonderful if we … starting from scratch
Friedman:….If you agree with everything I say, you are a unique human being.
Lawrence E. Spivak: I don’t say I do agree, but I said suppose I agree for the sake of argument. We can’t start from scratch. How do we undo what we have done? How would you undo it, not me?
Friedman: That’s the hardest problem and I agree that is the real question. How do we get from where we are to where we want to go? And we can’t get there overnight, we cannot get there by simply eliminating the things that should not have been done. As in the case of Social Security, we have it. And we’ve got to live up to our obligations. So we do have to develop a series of policies which will enable us gradually to move from where we are to where we want to be. The first and most important step in my opinion, is to stop moving in the wrong direction.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Milton, you said a few minutes ago that throughout the free world, the public is coming to recognize the danger of big government and is taking steps to control it. But how with the example of what freedom does before them, how do you explain the new countries that have been coming up, all going in the direction of dictatorship?
Friedman: The climate, the intellectual climate of opinion has an enormous influence on what happens and the popular intellectual attitude within the free countries for the poor countries has been that they have to have centralized government. And that has served the interests of small elite groups within those countries. In one backward country after another what has happened is they’ve gotten their freedom supposedly from colonial rule, you’ve had a small elite take over and they have run that country for their own benefit and at the expense of the poor. It’s a tragedy of the modern era. Change the climate of opinion in the major countries. As the climate of opinion is changing, as the philosophy, the attitude what’s being taught at the universities is different, and you will see that these other countries, these backward countries will follow it and there are, there is some evidence that way. If you look at the countries where the backward countries which are doing best for themselves, they are places like Hong Kong, like Singapore, like Taiwan, like Korea, they’re not free countries in our sense of the term but they have much larger elements of freedom. Much greater scope for individual initiative. Many other countries of the world which have gone much further in the Communist centralized controlled direction.
Lawrence E. Spivak: How, for example, Singapore in Taiwan, have had you say very free economies. Now how do there economies, remain free but their politics and their human freedom is still curtailed. And as I understand in many cases, rather severely curtailed. They don’t have any of the freedoms we have. Press, religion,
Friedman: Economic freedom is a necessary condition for a human, all humans, but it is not a sufficient condition. You can have an economy that is largely free with large elements of restrictions. For example, let me take the American experience before the Civil War. We had a mixture of a largely free economy, with a segment of the population, the slaves, held in the condition of involuntary servitude. But even where you don’t have complete political freedom in the case of a Singapore or a Taiwan, human beings are much freer than they are in those societies where there is no economic freedom either. If you compare the conditions of people in a place like Singapore with the conditions of people in a place like Red China, or for that matter, Indonesia, you will see that the economic freedom is a very important component of total freedom. It’s not something different, it’s not something separate. Economic freedom is part of total freedom and for most people it’s the most important part. Freedom doesn’t mean very much to a starving man. And if a free society could not help the starving man, it would be very difficult for, to remain free very long. That’s why the ability of a free society to improve the lot of the ordinary person is a very, very necessary condition for its remaining free but it’s not the fundamental reason why I want a free society. I want a free society for the human and ethically and moral values that you stressed as pertaining to freedom. Freedom really rests, the value of freedom.
Lawrence E. Spivak: But suppose the moral values mean a lot to me. But, again, as I say, they mean nothing to the man who is hungry. It means absolutely nothing to him. What are you going to…. well do you think it does mean something to him.
Friedman: No. At first I think it means something to many of them. Of course, many men have died for their moral values, have put those moral values much above life itself. But I, you and I are citizens of a free society, will not stand the sight of…
Lawrence E. Spivak: … Well let me put it a different way, suppose you turn and you made a speech to all the people on welfare and you said to them, look there are, freedom is much more important than the welfare money that you are getting. Their ethical concepts, their spiritual things about the, men have died for this things. What if you told them all that and then said and we’re going to withdraw welfare now. What do you think would happen now?
Friedman: Would tell them something else. I would tell them.
Lawrence E. Spivak: I know also what you’d do.
Friedman: I tell them both what I would do and what I would tell them. I would tell them welfare has been corrupting you. Look at what it is doing to you. Look at what it’s doing to your children. You would be far better off in every respect….
Lawrence E. Spivak: But suppose they said to you, I don’t see that at all. Without that welfare we’d be in an awful mess.
Friedman: Your wrong, you wouldn’t be in an awful mess, but I understand your feeling and I do not propose to withdraw assistance from you like that all at once. I think it would be intolerable to throw the millions of people who are now depending on welfare on to the streets. We’ve got to go gradually from here to there. That’s why I proposed a negative income tax as a transitional device. That it would enable us to give help to people who really need help while not at the same time having the kind of mess we have now where most of the benefits go to people who are not but look at the way in which the welfare system has been corrupting the very fabric of our society. We have put people in a trap which is of no part of your own making. I don’t blame them, but they’ve been put in a trap where we are inducing them to become dependents, to become children, not to become independent human beings. The virtue and the desire of freedom is for what people can do with their freedom. Freedom is not an individual value, it’s a social value. A Robinson Caruso on an island, freedom is a meaningless concept to him.
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