Milton Friedman: Frasi in inglese (pagina 5)

“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”

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Milton Friedman

Origine: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, pp. 12-13

“A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist.”

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Milton Friedman

Origine: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 34

“How much attention is paid to agreement between Galbraith and myself in opposing a draft and favoring an all-volunteer armed force, or in opposing tariffs and favoring free trade, or on a host of other issues? What is newsworthy is that Galbraith endorses wage and price controls, while I oppose them.”

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Milton Friedman

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“Over the period covered by these data, a drastic change has occurred in the responsibilities undertaken by the state to provide assistance to the aged, unemployed and otherwise dependent. This change has had divergent results on the particular data under discussion. The availability of assistance from the state would clearly tend to reduce the need for private reserves and so to reduce private saving—it is equivalent, in terms of our hypothesis, to a reduction in the variance of transitory components.”

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Milton Friedman

A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957)

“Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.”

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Milton Friedman

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to get this favor - whether those people are large enterprises, or whether they're small businesses like farmers, or whether they're representatives of any other special group. The only way to prevent that is to force them to engage in competition one with the other.”

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Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg

“The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

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Milton Friedman

Origine: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

“The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.”

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Milton Friedman

From The Tyranny of Control, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 2 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=2

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”

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Milton Friedman

"Why Government Is the Problem" (February 1, 1993), p. 19

“I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent.”

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Milton Friedman

Origine: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 163

“I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I'm right and he is wrong.”

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Milton Friedman

"Say 'No' to Intolerance", Liberty magazine, vol. 4, no. 6, (July 1991) pp. 17-20.

“The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.”

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Milton Friedman

Lecture "The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community" (1983); cited in Filters Against Folly (1985) by Garrett Hardin

“Every friend of freedom… must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”

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Milton Friedman

"An Open Letter to Bill Bennett" in The Wall Street Journal (7 September 1989)

“So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.”

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Milton Friedman

Interview "Milton Friedman Responds" in Chemtech (February 1974) p. 72.

“Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity: first, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued pur poses; third, they determine who gets how much of the product—the distribution of income. These three functions are closely in terrelated.”

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Milton Friedman libro Free to Choose

Origine: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", p. 14

“Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U. S. is now 45 percent socialist.”

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Milton Friedman

Article "We Have Socialism, Q.E.D." http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/11-25_Friedman_MGR.php?uid=2075 in The New York Times (31 December 1989)

“I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. (…) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism.”

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Milton Friedman

Interview with Parker in Randall E. Parker(ed.), Reflection on the Great Depression (2002)

“There's no such thing as a free lunch.”

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Milton Friedman

Also often misattributed to Robert A. Heinlein because both helped popularize the expression – Friedman with a book with that title. The phrase actually dates to at least the 1930s.
Misattributed

“The price system transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.”

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Milton Friedman libro Free to Choose

Origine: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", 15

“The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights, subject only to the proviso that he not interfere with the freedom of other individuals to do the same.”

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Milton Friedman libro Capitalismo e libertà

Origine: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 12 The Alleviation of Poverty