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| Authors: Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $5.67
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Avg. Customer Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 873
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 0156334607
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.122
EAN: 9780156334600
ASIN: 0156334607
Publication Date: November 26, 1990
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| Customer Reviews:
 Life transforming June 23, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Friedman was a genius. He was also the most articulate and fearless advovate for freedom. It seems that most are willing to give a little here and there for their pet projects. He was not. This is the best argument for the economic power that comes from freedom as well as the advantages for the individual. Over the long hall it is also the only way to prevent the loss of all freedoms. Read this book and it will positively change your life.
A book for freedom June 14, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Mr. Friedman, God rest his soul, continues to demonstrate the link between laissez faire economics and personal freedom. This companion to "Capitalism and Freedom" is a must read for those who are interested in individual liberty and the economic system that pertuates such liberty.
Be Free May 24, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
Milton and Rose Friedman, "A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
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On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality."
Milton Friedman, "Everybody agrees that socialism has been a failure. Everybody agrees that capitalism has been a success... yet everybody is extending socialism."
Lawrence Reed, "Free men are not equal and equal men are not free."
Tusen Takk!
Still a beauty April 8, 2007
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Almost 30 years on, Free to Choose still offers valuable insights to the political economics in western democracies. The books main message is that special interests always prevail over general interests. For that reason, we have tariffs on sugar though the majority of the electorate loses from it and we have restricted entry into several occupations like real estate brokers and furniture designing. The story of the development of the Interstate Commerce Commission is particuylarly readable. The ICC was established to protect the consumer (general interest), but quickly turned to protect the producers (special interest). Because special interests always prevail, the governments role in the economy should be restricted.
The Freidmans finish their book with a faint of hope. The final chapter is called The Tide is Turning, and in the foreword written in 1990, they acknowledge that public opinion is greatly different in 1990 than it was in 1975. And economic policy in the US is improved. Marginal tax rates are reduced sharply. Inflation is low and stable. The former communist countries have gone capitalist in scores.
Many of the key messages of the book are now conventional wisdom. Its still worth reading, though. The book offers a very gook look into the intellectual climate of the late 70s. It is one of the central works of one of history's most prominent economists. But foremost, it describes the logic of economics in a very beautiful way.
 A Classic and Totally True but Slightly Incomplete April 2, 2007
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
Milton Friedman was an economics professor at the University of Chicago who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his development of monetary economics. This book briefly explains how an economy works. Yet "Free to Choose" is something more. It's a personal statement that we should embrace free markets and freedom for all of us as individuals to make our own decisions. When we freely choose, the economy is more fair because individuals make their own choices with their own benefits and consequences. The economy is more prosperous and more efficient because the economy competed for customers and the best win out. A controlled economy is a huge mistake. The proper role of government should be that of a referee to ensure fair play - not run the game itself. Friedman's ideas moved the global economy ahead to more efficiency and prosperity, yet his ideas were based on the old ideas of liberty and free markets.
Friedman was an old-school liberal, better known these days as a libertarian. He believed strongly in the power of liberty, as opposed to extreme social orders such as Communism, Nazism, monopolies, mafias, religious theocracies, slavery, segregation, sexism, etc.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is one of the foundations upon which America had been founded. Yet pure free market economics fell out of favor in the wake of the excesses of the Gilded Age when unregulated capitalism was seen to have an immoral side of exploitation. After the trauma of the Great Depression, capitalism was seen to be unstable and cruel. Theodore Roosevelt used the Bully Pulpit to argue that government should regulate the "malefactors of great wealth." He created the Food and Drug Administration, broke up trusts, regulated railroads, and the American approved. Franklin Roosevelt pursued policies for economic stability and basic security, and Americans elected him president four times. Many people sincerely feared capitalism. This would inadvertently lead to some well-intentioned but very bad economic policies.
Some of the pragmatic reforms of the New Deal were excellent, such as the SEC to require audited financial statements, which leads to more transparent and more efficient markets. Without the SEC we would have many more Enron disasters. The Federal Reserve Open Market committee, a New Deal reform, manages the money supply. New Deal banking legislation requires certain capital reserves and insures deposits to $100,000, which forever ended bank panics. The FHA insured mortgages, which created the 30 year mortgage and brought home ownership to millions of people who used to have to rent or inherit a pile of money. Government regulations adopted later require safe consumer products, such as home appliances and the electrical hardware to bring electricity into our homes. The government regulates pollution. Student loans allow citizens to learn the skills that a prosperous economy needs.
Unfortunately, some of the government experiments in the mid-to-late 20th Century with regulations were mistakes, such as price controls and some welfare programs. Socialism became fashionable to many, especially in Europe, and regulations kept creeping upward. In the United States, this culminated in the late 1960s with the Great Society, although America never became truly socialistic like some European nations. By the 1970s, the global economy was mired in stagflation. Too many bureaucrats were making too many business decisions, hampering market activity and taking away the automatic operation of the economy through prices and consumer choices. Too many politicians were making decisions for purely political gain. Big city politicians have especially been that way for well over a century.
Friedman's weakness in this book is that he does not give due credit to the "referee" government regulations that ensure free and FAIR competition. Friedman is too one-sided in his argument. Indeed, his ideas work today because of pragmatic government reforms of capitalism, such as the New Deal, that did not exist in the past. Friedman emphasizes freedom, as he should for the time period he lived in, but there must be an assumption of at least mild fairness in order for free competition to work.
Remember the books by Charles Dickens on the horrors of the industrial revolution? Remember the disgusting pollution that was so bad in London that the fog was filthy black? Some old buildings in Europe today are still stained black from the filth because they could not be cleaned of the filth. Remember the horrors of industrial child labor and slavery? The most powerful quickly overwhelm the less powerful in a "free" market without protections, and that's how some people want it.
Friedman blames the Federal Reserve for the Great Depression, which is partly true, but the constrictive gold standard was a leading cause as it caused the Fed to tighten and then spread the Depression globally. The countries that abondoned the gold standard the quickest recoverd the quickest. The countries that were not on the gold standard did not experience the Great Depression at all! Hoover refused to abandon the gold standard. FDR abaondoned it quickly, and the contraction ended. Ironically, Friedman's critique says the government was responsible because it did not intervene as it should have earlier.
Also, the financial systems completely collapsed when over 10,000 banks collapsed. The economy would never have recovered without government intervention to save and then reform the financial system, which FDR eventually did. Friedman was not honest about this. He seems so fixated on claiming that government is the problem that he is not truthful about the Great Depression. Friedman also says that the Great Crash did not cause the Great Depression, which is true. But it did make a natural recovery impossible. The financial system fell like a house of cards because there was no regulatory structure to support it. Also, numerous financial scandals rocked the financial system, such as the scandal involving Richard Whitney, formerly the president of the New York Stock Exchange, a member of the board of governors, and arguably the most recognized broker in America.
Friedman also has an overly simplistic solution to inner-city poverty, and he says that schools should receive voicers so inner city parents can be better consumers through more freedom. This would do nothing to solve the real underlying (and maybe unsolvable problems) of cultures of disfunction, broken families, crime, and massive drug use. Ironically, Friedman would legalize drugs for more freedom. Friedman's overall theme of liberty being best is definitely correct, but with some commonsense exceptions please.
Adam Smith, the creator of economics, also said that government must make the investements for the common good that the free market never would make. America has a long history of making these investments, such as canals, roads, bridges, dams, school buildings, parks, aquaducts, etc. Yet Friedman mentions little about this partnership with government. Free markets do not work for everything, although I would argue for 95% of things.
Finally, economic activity is ultimately a social activity. People make money when they organizations with different functions and many people performing those function. It is only because we are socially cooperative that an economy can work. Friedman's emphasis on the individual is correct, but there is more to it. Look at this book as one of a dozen needed views.
Friedman was an optimist. He believed in the power of competition. He was 95% right. True competition will correct most economic problems. I wish more socialist liberals would read this book and learn that less is more. I highly recommend this book.
I also recommend Ronald Reagan's autobiography titled "An American Life," since he was the political figure who rhetorically sold Americans again on free markets. Reagan explains his optimistic views of free markets, his opposition to excessive government controls, his disgust for able-bodied freeloaders on welfare, and his optimistic belief in the goodness of individuals. He also says that he voted four times for Franklin Roosevelt, who said that welfare could destroy the work ethic like "a narcotic" and liquidated the temporary welfare programs designed to aid the country through the Depression once the crisis passed, only to be revived later. Reagan said he was not trying to undo the New Deal; he was trying to unleash the economy from the excesses of 1960s liberalism and excessive economic controls.
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