Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property.
— Milton Friedman
And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?
Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed?
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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.
I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that's missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash - a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
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.
Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.
One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
When government - in pursuit of good intentions - tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
