Book and Video Note: Free to Choose (Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman)

I am reading this book and watched all its 10 videos on youtube. And now I think every book should have a video like these from the writer. Definitely one of best books I’ve ever read. Here are my notes on it…so far.

• Free enterprise — Economic freedom is as important as human freedom.
• Greatest threat to freedom is concentration of power whether in the hands of government or anyone else.
• Government means we are handing our power to elected officials. So the less power we hand over the better.
• More power to one means less freedom to others. If someone is given power, it is more likely they are going to use it.
• Government is indirectly proportional to freedom.
• The only roles of government are 1) Safety — preserving order at home, 2) Security — protecting from foreign enemies, 3) Mediating disputes.
• Government is only required when 3rd party is involved without voluntary cooperation. For example, there should be laws to require brakes, cause automobile could hit 3rd party. Similarly, air pollution needs controlling cause 3rd party didn’t volunteer for polluted air. But, there shouldn’t be laws to require air bags cause it doesn’t involve 3rd party and that should be determined by the market not government.
• The problem exists as long as we believe the way to solve our problems is to turn them over to government. Voluntary cooperation is far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to government.
• Voluntary Cooperation — Adam Smith’s ‘ Wealth of Nations’: If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. .
• Invisible Hand — The unobservable market force that helps the demand and supply of goods in a free market to reach equilibrium automatically. The price system could coordinate the activity of millions of people, each seeking his own interest.
• A system that is dependent on the right man is a bad system. Federal Reserve was a bad system because it was dependent on right man working on it.
• US government owns 40% of all business through taxes. Therefore US is a socialist country.
• Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends him own. Trying to do good with other people’s money has not worked.
• Rules should be made for government not people. Like, government should not be allowed to run any organization.

My Thoughts (more to come):

• Argument should always be done at value level (good or bad for society).
• Is competition good or bad for society?
• If government runs a business, does that increase a decrease a competition?
• Any thing government does is a monopoly cause it runs on unlimited budget (taxes) and therefore can operate even at loss and no private organization can compete with that.
• Government should not be involved in any activity that can be done via private enterprise. If government involved in a service (for example, post office), then private enterprise will have to compete with it. Since government has unlimited funding (taxes), it can operate at a loss, which is not viable for private enterprise. Hence, they will fail and government will now have monopoly. With no competition, government service will have no incentive to perform better. Hence, the very people who government intended to serve in the first place, will be the ones affected the most.