Milton Friedman and Liberty

The Bionic Mosquito notes that the Cato Institute has called Milton Friedman “perhaps the greatest champion of liberty in the 20^th century.” The Mosquito dissents: Friedman supported use of the money supply as an instrument of government policy, hardly a policy consistent with liberty. “Cato writes ‘an instrument of government policy ’without a blink. That instrument is one of two most important means of control that a government has over its people (the other being the public funding of education, which Friedman also supported via his voucher scheme).” It is much more reasonable to call Murray Rothbard “perhaps the greatest champion of liberty in the 20^th century,” and the Mosquito refers us to Rothbard’s devastating assessment of Friedman.

The Best of David Gordon