Architect of inequality obvs trickle down trick used to destroy trade unions for whom free labour markets had to be fought for and inevitably lost for socialist elected and unelected governments and competition became monopoly takeover
Freedom and Capitalism was a criticism of government spending, asserting that said spending was either a hindrance to markets through taxation or regulation.
The freedoms he wrote about could only apply to the rich, because it was only a matter of time before only the rich would have access to markets. Today's oligarchs use the concept of freedom in much the same way.
Adam Smith wrote about the morality that was necessary for society to function. Nobody talks about it, but he wrote about it.
Whatever system a society chooses must include certain basic things if it intends to be a free society. There must be power in place to protect the vulnerable. If this is ignored, the vulnerable will be abused. If a society allows abuse of the vulnerable then that society condones the abuse. This allows and gradually promotes abuse which affects the safety of the society as a whole.
We have to decide what kind of world we want to live in.
If we put wealthy individuals in competition with each other, one person or group will eventually dominate and the concept of free market is defeated. That's what corporations are. They are individuals hidden behind organizations designed to extract as much wealth as possible from people and natural resources, regardless of the moral consequences. The only measure that has meaning is profit. They are forced to set aside moral considerations or they will lose to those who are more ruthless and irresponsible to society. They are legally bound to produce the maximum wealth they can for their shareholders.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
Another essential thing a free society needs is accurate information. We have not had accurate, unbiased national information systems for decades. The lies, bias, and omissions are more obvious today, but once they forced news to operate only on a for profit basis, they broke objective, informative news systems.
The third essential thing a free society requires is EQUAL access to education and therefore employment. Education also gives individuals, regardless of class, color, or sex, the intellectual skills to compete with the rich for power in the society, or at least to be reasonably independent within a structure that considers its primary function is to acquire wealth.
IDK exactly what Friedman believed about these concepts I've briefly described here. I do believe he contributed greatly to a system designed to exploit and control people who had no, or relatively modest, access to wealth.
When a society is designed it must not assume that each individual acting in their immediate best interest will create a free society. Nor can it be assumed that people have limits to immoral actions. If a system supports self interest at the cost of other people's welfare, that system will ultimately promote depravity. That is where the US is headed. That is why the government has been taken over by oligarchs with no respect for law. They seek control over the general population. They are running out of natural resources to sell. This is the panic before the collapse.
IDK if Friedman looked this far ahead, but he should have done.
They couldn't coordinate the decline of natural resources because to negotiate limits would require trust between the oligarchs. They couldn't risk the vulnerability.
I think of corporations as monsters who poop money. They might have been OK to live with if they could have been contained. Otherwise, the only thing corporations are good for is destruction.
I could qualify this statement by saying that inequality and killing individual existential threat and societal genocide but not trickle down was possibly an unintended consequence of free/open markets ideology leading to totalitarian capitalist and communist governments. Hayek/Rand both miscalculated and underestimated the extent to which trickle down became sheer personal greed.
Together with Ludwig von Mises and others, the latter, an architect of inequality.
Architect of inequality obvs trickle down trick used to destroy trade unions for whom free labour markets had to be fought for and inevitably lost for socialist elected and unelected governments and competition became monopoly takeover
Freedom and Capitalism was a criticism of government spending, asserting that said spending was either a hindrance to markets through taxation or regulation.
The freedoms he wrote about could only apply to the rich, because it was only a matter of time before only the rich would have access to markets. Today's oligarchs use the concept of freedom in much the same way.
Adam Smith wrote about the morality that was necessary for society to function. Nobody talks about it, but he wrote about it.
Whatever system a society chooses must include certain basic things if it intends to be a free society. There must be power in place to protect the vulnerable. If this is ignored, the vulnerable will be abused. If a society allows abuse of the vulnerable then that society condones the abuse. This allows and gradually promotes abuse which affects the safety of the society as a whole.
We have to decide what kind of world we want to live in.
If we put wealthy individuals in competition with each other, one person or group will eventually dominate and the concept of free market is defeated. That's what corporations are. They are individuals hidden behind organizations designed to extract as much wealth as possible from people and natural resources, regardless of the moral consequences. The only measure that has meaning is profit. They are forced to set aside moral considerations or they will lose to those who are more ruthless and irresponsible to society. They are legally bound to produce the maximum wealth they can for their shareholders.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
Another essential thing a free society needs is accurate information. We have not had accurate, unbiased national information systems for decades. The lies, bias, and omissions are more obvious today, but once they forced news to operate only on a for profit basis, they broke objective, informative news systems.
The third essential thing a free society requires is EQUAL access to education and therefore employment. Education also gives individuals, regardless of class, color, or sex, the intellectual skills to compete with the rich for power in the society, or at least to be reasonably independent within a structure that considers its primary function is to acquire wealth.
IDK exactly what Friedman believed about these concepts I've briefly described here. I do believe he contributed greatly to a system designed to exploit and control people who had no, or relatively modest, access to wealth.
When a society is designed it must not assume that each individual acting in their immediate best interest will create a free society. Nor can it be assumed that people have limits to immoral actions. If a system supports self interest at the cost of other people's welfare, that system will ultimately promote depravity. That is where the US is headed. That is why the government has been taken over by oligarchs with no respect for law. They seek control over the general population. They are running out of natural resources to sell. This is the panic before the collapse.
IDK if Friedman looked this far ahead, but he should have done.
They couldn't coordinate the decline of natural resources because to negotiate limits would require trust between the oligarchs. They couldn't risk the vulnerability.
I think of corporations as monsters who poop money. They might have been OK to live with if they could have been contained. Otherwise, the only thing corporations are good for is destruction.
I could qualify this statement by saying that inequality and killing individual existential threat and societal genocide but not trickle down was possibly an unintended consequence of free/open markets ideology leading to totalitarian capitalist and communist governments. Hayek/Rand both miscalculated and underestimated the extent to which trickle down became sheer personal greed.