Capitalism and Freedom
By: Milton Freidman

In Milton Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman presents his theory, which is the importance of a free economy that is, without government interference. He strongly believes the government should stay out of anything to do with the economy. Friedman is under the impression that any government that is not the most basic government is bad. He thinks that it is important to let the invisible hand do its job and that by interfering with the natural process the system will get messed up.
He introduces some radical ideas such as non-licensed doctors and school vouchers. Friedman was under the impression that if doctors were not required to obtain licenses, a better breed of doctors would come along. He thinks that by allowing the modern doctors to dictate whom the future doctors will be the competition for better doctors is impaired. By putting guidelines on who can practice medicine the system is creating the same level of doctor consistency. Friedman disagrees with this process because he sees competition a driving force that makes people to be the best they can be. Therefore, by making want-to-be doctors conform to a certain mold, the cycle of survival of the fittest is ruined. No better doctors or forms of practicing medicine will come along if this process is stunted.
Friedman is also for school vouchers. This system of vouchers is the idea of the government giving parents a certain amount of money to spend on their children’s schooling. Therefore parents can send their child to a private or public school. Friedman believes that by making private school an option for everyone, the competition for better education will heighten. To create the best schools there must be a competition present for better schools to rise up. By making private schools a possibility for all people the public schools are requires to meet the expectations of private schools or else no one would attend the public schools. When the public schools raise the bar, the private schools are forced to also raise the bar. This is how the best schools will arise. Competition has to be present for schools or anything to reach its full potential.
Friedman proves this theory of government interference as damaging, by showing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 in a negative light. Friedman suggests that if the Federal Reserve Act would have created a rule that would have required companies to increase the monetary flow by 3-5% every year, the act would have stabilized the economy. Friedman’s stance on international finance and trade agreements is that monetary flow should not be managed especially among the world’s major industrial states. He is against the Bretton Woods system because this system is for government regulation of money in commercial and financial relations. Friedman strongly advocates that government interference is nothing but harmful. He gives examples of past government interventions that failed to be productive and actually harmed the economy.
Friedman strongly disagrees with any continual government spending. He believes that nothing even the “balance the wheel” theory justifies government intervention of any kind. Government spending makes the economy less stable and hurts the natural flow of the economy. Friedman even disagrees with government enforcing fair employment laws. He believes that the more qualified people are sometimes ignored because the employers are looking or trying to diversities their staff. Friedman also believes that Right to Work Laws should be abolished. He wanted them abolished because the Right to Work Laws required agreements between trade unions and employers making union fees a condition of employments. Friedman believed that monopolies should not be built with any help of government. He had three alternatives for a monopoly: public monopoly, private monopoly or public regulation. Friedman often found what he believed to be flaws in many government systems; he also came up with alternatives to the government’s laws.
Friedman attacked the U.S taxing system. He believes that a uniform flat tax with no deductions would be a much better system than the progressive tax system. Friedman is also in favor of negative income tax because he thinks it would give everyone a guaranteed minimum income. He shares his negative outlook on social welfare. Friedman claims that social welfare does not help the poor as much as a lot of the public believes. After explaining how the government affects the economy and giving clear example of when and how the government has hurt the economy in the past, Friedman makes his conclusion. His conclusion states that government should stay out! Government interventions always have an opposite effect than they were intended to. All positive things in the United States have come from the free market and not the government. Friedman makes a strong, controversial point in his book Capitalism and Freedom. He has many solid examples on how government has negatively affected the economy during points throughout history. While all of Friedman’s and examples are true there are still many gapping holes in his argument. His ideas make sense in theory but there are many problems with his radical ideas and even his overall theory on government interference. For example by allowing non licensed doctors to practice medicine, better doctors might come along but would that be worth all of the lives lost or ruined due to the inexperienced doctors hurting their patients by mistake? Another flaw in his theory is his failure to calculate the time it would take for another dominates business or monopoly to take over. If the government did not intervene and instead allowed the huge corporations to fail it could take a number of years before another big corporation could take its spot and in the meantime thousands of people would be out of work causing even more problems in the economy. While Friedman makes many good points and presents a good argument he still has some points he has not covered. He also failed to take in to consideration the fact that the government usually only interferes during an economically hard time and therefore they might not always have instant success and for most of this huge economic issue there is not quick fix and sometimes no solid solution at all. He also failed to refute the fact that government help has helped in the past for example Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal, which brought the country out of economic depression. Friedman has a strong argument and makes good points but he is also ignorant some of the successes the government has had while intervening in the economy. People today, better hope that Milton Friedman’s thesis is not correct or Obama’s continuous government intervention in today’s failing economy will prove to be unsuccessful and everyone will experience even harder times