Happy Birthday, Milton!

Sunday is the 99th anniversary of the birth of the late economist Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his work in monetary theory. Even more important than his academic work, however, was his devotion to individual liberty and a free society. And as this excellent Reason tribute (also above) shows, Friedman was a true gentleman who could argue both politely and forcefully for his beliefs. Indeed, Friedman's PBS series Free to Choose (1980) - particularly the debate sessions that made up the second portion of each episode - is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to learn how to exchange ideas without frothing at the mouth or resorting to personal insults. And for reading material, I cannot recommend highly enough Friedman's two best works for the average (i.e. non-economist) reader: Capitalism & Freedom and Free to Choose. The former, which I first read as a young skeptic of markets, did as much as any book to sway my thinking in the early years.

Finally, I'll leave you with some of Friedman's classic quotes:

"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."

"Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."

"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."