November 16, 2006

This just in: "invisible hand" swipes Friedman

Economist Milton Friedman dies at 94.

Too bad the Chicago school won't go with him.

Think CATO will demand a Reagan-esque mass for him at the Capitol? Maybe they'll just embalm him and put him under glass all Lenin-style.

In his defense, he did vehemently resist the draft along with the "war on drugs," insisting on decriminalization like a true libertarian. That's not to say he wasn't the epitome of right-wing though.

This conservative's comment on DKos sums up where Friedman and his fellow bootstrappers went so wrong:
...he wasn't a hero of mine because his calculus didn't include right and wrong, social justice or the general welfare of the people.
Friedman (surprisingly) sounding in favor of CSR in "The Corporation":
Can a building have moral opinions? Can a building have social responsibility? If a building can't have social responsibility, what does it mean to say that a corporation can? A corporation is simply an artificial legal structure. But the people who are engaged in it, whether the stockholders, whether the executives in it, whether the employees, they all have moral responsibilities.
RIP, though Chile's poor will be dancing on your grave.

No comments: