Austro-libertarian Critiques of Milton Friedman

From: T
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 1:44 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: “Deserver has nothing to do with it.” Clint Eastwood. Milton Friedman on your description of Hayek in your new book

“Deserve has nothing to do with it.” Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven

“He (Hayek) deserves better than your self-satisfied diatribe.” Milton Friedman on page 56 of your new book “Property Rights, The Argument for Privatization”.

Dear Walter,

I am continuing to enjoy reading your new book. It is very well written and thought provoking. Your correspondence with Milton Friedman is fascinating. Didn’t MF come up with the withholding tax during WWII that remains with us today? I truly dislike the withholding tax and the men who installed that form of slavery over me during my working days.

I also truly loathe the words “deserves”. As Clint shows in his movie “Unforgiven”, the word and idea of “deserves” is socialist bullshit! If there is one thing I’ve learned in living my life it is that “Deserve has nothing to do with it.”

Thanks again for writing the book. Friedman is a dick imo.

T

Dear T:

Thanks for your kind comments.

Here’s some more criticisms of Milton:

Berliner, 1995, 326; Block, 1969, 1999, 2003A, 2003B, 2006, 2010A, 2010B, 2011, 2013; Block and Barnett, 2012-2013; Freidman and Block, 2006; Friedman, 2000; Kinsella, 2009; Lind, 2012; Long, 2006; Marcus, 2007; McChesney, 1991; North, 2012;  Rothbard, 2002; Friedman and Block, 2006; Friedman and Block, 2006; Kinsella, 2009; Lind, 2012; Machan, 2010; Marcus, 2007; McChesney, 1991; North, 2012; Rand, undated; Rothbard, 2002; Sennholz, 2006; Vance, 1996, 2005; Wapshott, 2012; Wenzel, 2012; Wilcke, 1999

Berlner, Michael S., ed. 1995. Letters of Ayn Rand. New York, N.Y.: Dutton

Block, Walter E. 1969. “Against the Volunteer Military,” The Libertarian Forum, August 15, p. 4; http://www.mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_08_15.pdf

Block, Walter E. 1999. “The Gold Standard: A Critique of Friedman, Mundell, Hayek, Greenspan,” Managerial Finance, Vol. 25, No. 5, pp. 15-33; http://giorgio.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContainer.do?containerType=Issue&containerId=13529http://www.mises.org/etexts/goldcritique.pdf

Block, Walter E. 2003A. “Private property rights, economic freedom, and Professor Coase: A Critique of Friedman, McCloskey, Medema and Zorn,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer, pp. 923-951;

Block, Walter E. 2003B. “Private property rights, economic freedom, and Professor Coase: A Critique of Friedman, McCloskey, Medema and Zorn,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer, pp. 923-951; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2782/is_3_26/ai_n6640908/?tag=content

Block, Walter E. 2006. “Milton Friedman, RIP.” November 16.

http://www.mises.org/story/2393http://blog.freeny.org/?p=818

Block, Walter E. 2010A. “Milton Friedman on Intolerance: A Critique.” Libertarian Papers; Vol. 2, No. 41; http://mises.org/daily/6208/Friedman-on-Intolerance-A-Critique;

http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/41-block-milton-friedman-on-intolerance-a-critique/;

Block, Walter E. 2010B. “Is Milton Friedman a libertarian? No.” Laissez-Faire, No. 32, pp. 9-22, March; http://fce.ufm.edu/Publicaciones/LaissezFaire/

Block, Walter E. 2011. “How Not To Defend the Market: A critique of Easton, Miron, Bovard, Friedman and Boudreaux.” Journal of Libertarian Studies; Vol. 22, pp. 581–592; http://mises.org/journals/jls/22_1/22_1_28.pdf

Block, Walter E. 2013. “Was Milton Friedman a socialist” Management Education Science Technology Journal (MEST Journal); Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 11- 26; http://mest.meste.org/MEST_1_2013/_02.pdf;

http://mest.meste.org/MEST_1_2013/Sadrzaj_eng.html

Block, Walter E. and William Barnett II. 2012-2013. “Milton Friedman and the financial crisis,” American Review of Political Economy, Vol. 10, No. 1/2, June, 2012 – June 2013; pp. 2-17; http://www.ARPEJournal.comhttp://arpejournal.com./ARPEvolume10number1-2/Block.pdfarpejournal.com

Friedman, Milton and Walter E. Block. 2006. “Fanatical, Not Reasonable: A Short Correspondence Between Walter E. Block and Milton Friedman (on Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom).” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, Summer, pp. 61-80; http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/20_3/20_3_4.pdfhttps://mises.org/system/tdf/20_3_4.pdf?file=1&type=document

Friedman, Milton. 2000. “Interview,” Commanding Heights. October 1; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_miltonfriedman.html

States Milton Friedman (2000): “In the middle of a debate on the subject of distribution of income, in which you had people who you would hardly call socialist or egalitarian — people like Lionel Robbins, like George Stigler, like Frank Knight, like myself — Mises got up and said, ‘You’re all a bunch of socialists,’ and walked right out of the room.”

Long, Roderick T. 2006. “Realism and abstraction in economics: Aristotle and Mises versus Friedman.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall, pp. 3–23; http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae9_3_1.pdf

Kinsella, Stephan. 2009. “Milton Friedman on Intolerance, Liberty, Mises, Etc.” November 9;

http://archive.mises.org/11004/milton-friedman-on-intolerance-liberty-mises-etc/

Lind, Michael. 2012. “Thank you, Milton Friedman: How conservatives’ economic hero helped make the case for big government.” August 7 ;

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/07/thank_you_milton_friedman/

Machan, Tibor R. 2010. Milton Friedman and the Human Good, June 7; http://mises.org/daily/4451/Milton-Friedman-and-the-Human-Good

Marcus, B. K. 2007. “The Tepid Movement Before Mises” April 12; http://www.mises.org/story/2530

McChesney, Fred. 1991. “Antitrust and Regulation: Chicago’s Contradictory Views,” Cato Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3, Winter, pp. 775-778

North, Gary. 2012. “Detours on the Road to Freedom: Where Milton Friedman Went Wrong.” http://archive.lewrockwell.com/north/north1178.html

Rand, Ayn. Undated. Her view on Friedman, and Stigler, 1946: “‘collectivist propaganda’ and ‘the most pernicious thing ever issued by an avowedly conservative organization’” cited in Skousen, Mark. 2001. The Making of Modern Economics. New York: M. E. Sharpe, p. 387; http://books.google.ca/books?id=QV2OJqbt45oC&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=%22the+most+pernicious+thing+ever+issued+by+an+avowedly+conservative+organization%22&source=web&ots=D-V4j_dhJA&sig=DZYoo1KjulTGviiR7kFGINFrbnY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

Friedman, Milton and George Stigler. 1946. “Roofs or Ceilings?,” September, Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, http://www.fee.org/library/books/Roofs_or_Ceilings.asp; reprinted as Friedman, Milton, and George Stigler. 1981. “Roofs or Ceilings?” in Rent Control: Myths and Realities, Walter E. Block and Edgar Olsen, eds., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute.

Rothbard, Murray N. 2002. “Milton Friedman Unraveled.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4, Fall, pp. 37-54; http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/16_4/16_4_3.pdf

Sennholz Hans F. 2006. “Milton Friedman, 1912-2006,” December 16; http://mises.org/story/2414

Vance, Laurence M. 1996. “Friedman’s Mistake.” The Free Market. Vol. 14, No. 11. November. http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=158&sortorder=articledate

Vance, Laurence. 2005. “The Curse of the Withholding Tax” April 21;

http://www.mises.org/story/1797

Wapshott, Nicholas. 2012. “A Lovefest Between Milton Friedman and J.M. Keynes.” July 30; http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/30/nicholas-wapshott-a-lovefest-between-milton-friedman-and-j-m-keynes.html; “Libertarians worship Milton Friedman, and liberals lionize John Maynard Keynes. But a long-lost essay shows that the champion of small government admired the prince of the New Deal.”

Wenzel, Robert. 2012. “How Milton Friedman Helped Make the Case for Big Government.” August 9; http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/08/how-milton-friedman-helped-make-case.html

Wilcke, Richard R. 1999. “An appropriate ethical model for business,

and a critique of Milton Friedman,” http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Ethics.PDF

Best regards,

Walter

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1:45 am on January 27, 2020