It's bizarre to see all the comments posted immediately on this video unanimously dismissing him. I lean left, but Friedman was a genius and intellectually honest and worth listening to, even if you disagree with him (and I disagree with him plenty). Just a good reminder how warped some of these subreddits are that we are dismissing Milton Friedman entirely. In this same Q&A he goes on to talk about the rights of gay people and legalizing drugs in the 60s/70s.
I think the sentiment in here is they are focusing on the results of the policy he’s discussing, which in my opinion are not independently responsible. In the clip, he is right about other industries filling the gaps… but what this and most conservative policy ignores is what happens in the interim.
Industry doesn’t appear overnight, and when a bunch of people lose not just jobs, but careers, the transition is very difficult, at times impossible. My opinion is you need to pair this global economic theory with robust social safety nets, to which the US seems to be allergic. You need something to bridge the gap between transitions otherwise people will fall through the cracks.
Watching Friedman on Donahue is such a wonderful experience. When Donahue welcomes him on the show he says something along the lines of "We may not always agree, but every time we talk, I always understand exactly what you mean." He very clearly respected Friedman because he realized that he was both intelligent and honest.
I find it interesting few of those comments actually address specifically what he is talking about in the video but instead cite other things or just attack him as a whole.
A broken right-wing-economic clock, being right only two minutes per day, can be dismissed at every moment of the day.
Right-wing economic doctrine got us into this mess. If your point is that even bonkers right-wing economists think using tariffs like this is foolish, then great. If your point is that Trump's complete mishandling of the economy means we need to double down on right-wing economic doctrine, then yeah, people will feel the need to push back against that.
The US has generally been dominated by Keynes economic theories…
Also tariffs, protectionism and command and control economics is generally an ethos of more left wing economic policy do of course anyone right of centre would disagree.
No, he's a soulless ghoul because in the name of the "economy" he couldn't care less about his fellow man. Endorsing Pinochet and his massacre only because he was doing the "right thing" (A.K.A following MY ideas) economy wise is just the conclusion of his philosophy, a philosophy were people are just numbers and if a third have to die in the gutter just so "the economy" can do fine then so be it.
Oh no, he just went to Chile to give talks, got a reunion one on one with the guy, praised his economic reforms in the press, blamed all of his problems (economic wise) to destabilizing marxists actors and kept saying that he was a nice chap until his dying breath. But at least he wasn't endorsing him.
The only reason why he didn't openly endorsed him was because of pressure from his peers and because it threatened his nobel prize.
He was asked for economic advice by Pinochet so he gave it. He praised the moving towards a free market. He didn't like Pinochet and did not support him but obviously he supported mving towards a more liberal economy which is what he spent his entire life promoting.
You can be opposed to someone and still say that certain policy changes are good.
I was essentially alluding to that. Every social media platform is riddled with bots, I suspect mostly from Russia and other adversaries. I stay away from social media in general and try to heavily curate my reddit feed to avoid them. But obviously, I’m not always successful.
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u/evilfollowingmb 2d ago
If only Reddit were interested in Friedman’s ideas that weren’t opposed to one Trump policy…