Capitalism and Freedom
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Selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the "hundred most influential books since the war"How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy—one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.
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This is a book about how the American economy should be structured IF every economic actor thought and acted exactly like Milton Friedman. If we assume, in other words, that every American is a greedy little number cruncher with no bias or sentimentality and with all the time in the world to agonize over the smallest differences in price, then this book should be an excellent prescription of how the American economy should be structured; If we cannot make that assumption, then the plan layed out in this book is completely worthless.
Incidentally, you could make the same point about the Communist Manifesto. How easy it would be to structure an economy if everyone thought and acted exactly the same!
Additionally, in Chapter 10, the chapter on wealth distribution, Friedman claims that the goal of anti-capitalists is complete income equality —something that I've never heard any person over the age of 7 ever advocate for— and then bases the entire chapter on that premise. Friedman also makes some pretty dubious assertions about the ethics of desegregation, and recommends that licenses should not be required to practice medicine, so all in all, it's a pretty horseshit book that I recommend you read if you want to understand the
