The time I have spent considering Dr. Friedman's widely read and highly influential manifesto has not raised his work in my esteem. Indeed, an impish question occurred to me. Did Dr. Friedman have siblings, and did his mother once upon a time in his youth take her children with her as she shopped for groceries? In my imagination I see the little "Miltie" wishing for himself and each of his siblings to have coins to buy their own favorite candy. Instead the mother announces, "No, I am buying this pack of vanilla ice cream for us all to share with your father tonight." I have come to feel that a large part of Dr. Friedman's argument stems from an analogous disappointment. Of course when a choice is made to spend money one way, we eliminate the possibility (the "freedom") to spend that money in another way. But should we deny ourselves the advantages of major public works? Transportation? Communications? Fire and police protection? Military defense? Shall we all return to past centuries and become subsistence farmers? I believe we can, as a nation, as a state within that nation, as communities, agree upon public decisions that effectively create common benefits.
I have concluded that an objective analysis of the past thirty years demonstrates the basic failure of free market laissez faire policies as practiced in the United States. We need to understand the free market for what it is: one of the most complex and powerful economic arrangements ever devised by the human brain. Like all powerful engines, it must be subjected to guidance and control in order to maintain good outcomes. We need to understand why certain instances have worked well competition and lower prices for better products in the computer and electronics industries, for example and also understand instances in which it has led to monopolistic concentrations of power, higher prices, and products of lesser quality.
I believe that a free market guided by intelligently formulated regulation can provide great benefits to a society. I also believe that an unregulated free market will always sooner or later lead to disaster for all but a tiny most wealthy segment.
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