Note

by

John Fund on the charm of Milton Friedman, streaming Free to Choose
and the man behind the series, Bob Chitester.

9 thoughts on “Note”

  1. While it is delightful to bow before this religious icon long associated with the University, it moight be worthwhile for a look from another perspective to note what was and was not so great about a great man. We can stand a questioning fellow economist, right

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19857

  2. Krugman is unreliable, and that is putting it nicely. And probably envious as well. seeing the byline tells me all I need to know. Look elsewhere for objective reality.

  3. A less than scholarly response in that you dismiss with the simple note that Krugman is “unreliable.” I challenge yhou to read the article and show us where he is wrong and unreliable in what he says in this piece (I am ignoring anyh and all other things he mahy have written or said that you might object to).

  4. Great Series, I hope I can get the DVD in Mexico soon. Also, I am glad to say that Friedman’s ideas are being studied and discussed more and more in Mexican society and our political and economical analysts like never before. In the past they risked being labeled pro business.

    Unfortunately, Hernando De Soto is not the only free market advocate under fire in Latin America. In Mexico, if you dare to publicly express such ideas in certain places where the left is very strong, you get insulted sometimes; you say thanks and go the other way, no problem.
    But the incendiary harangues of Chavez, Evo, and Correa have gotten South America to extreme levels of anti Americanism and where people like Hernando de Soto have to leave the region for fear of getting killed only for speaking out in favor of free markets and private property rights.

    Last week in Davos, Lula, Brazil’s President, came out in defense of Chavez from Venezuela and Evo from Bolivia after Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon openly criticized those countries for the nationalizations and expropriations, the populism taking place there and the “Personal Dictatorships”, as Calderon put it himself in reference to Chavez and Castro. Mexico’s President has got more leverage at home to speak in those terms because the Conservative party PAN is the strongest at home, but Lula, a moderate socialist himself, cannot criticize Chavez for fear of trouble at home with the radicals, so when repeatedly inquired about Chavez, he came out in his defense saying the three times he had been elected the elections had been clean, and beg people not to be afraid of what he called “some nationalizations or expropriations in south America”. Nonetheless, he didn’t look very happy to have to answer for his neighbor Chavez.

    But in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, the radical left has managed to associate free market ideas with racism, they have branded the free market as the ideas of the Criollos (Spanish descendants) who control the economy, politics and society and live from and exploit the Amerindians. Chavez did it in Venezuela, with his afro appeal, Evo in Bolivia used his ethnic background all the campaign, Correa talks much about it, even though a Criollo himself. Their incendiary discourse is quickly catching fire in very dry grasslands of people, impoverished and discriminated for centuries. Lopez Obrador tried to do something of the sort in Mexico too, and almost got it.

    Chile, of course, is a different story, the Chicago boys you know.

  5. From Fund’s column:

    Since the success of “Free to Choose,” Mr. Chitester has gone on to produce programs that range across time and space, from a dramatization of how the Pilgrims realized the importance of private property to a series on private space exploration. He has produced five teaching kits based on John Stossel’s ABC News TV specials that have been used in 84,000 classrooms to encourage more rigorous thinking about science and economics.

    Today, Mr. Chitester is most excited about a two-hour program he is producing featuring Hernando de Soto. A Peruvian economist, Mr. de Soto has been the target of murder attempts by drug barons and Marxist terrorists who fear his message that the poor in developing nations need true capitalism–property rights, markets and the rule of law. Time magazine recently named him one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century.

    Krugman appears more moderate in NYRB than in his BDS mode. But an acknowledgement that Friedman (and Bush) are right about the way to help our lowest paid workers would be nice: a link (prompted by Instapundit) argues: “An early read came out today from the ADP National Employment report, which found that private-sector employment jumped by 152,000 based on an analysis of actual payroll data.” If we care for the future – whether in the third world or here, policies that lead to low unemployment are good.

  6. I challenge you to not waste my time with a cite to a leftist shill like Krugman.

    He used to be a person with scholarly merit. He wrote interesting things about the growth rates in Asia being mostly a matter of factor mobilization.

    But he got politicized, and started writing in a polemical and unbalanced way, and squandered his reputation.

    That’s why I say he is unrelialble.

    I am generally familiar with Friedman’s career and writing, so I am not going to learn anything from Krugman.

    I skimmed the article. For Krugman, it did not look too bad. I’d like to see a rebuttal by somebody knowledgeable on the details. I would not be surprised to learn that Krugman had omitted facts, shaded things, etc. as he has been doing for years now.

  7. Krugman often functions as a hack in his career as a columnist, but his arguments, like all arguments, stand or fall on their merits, and sometimes he is right. But since I have read only a fraction of this article I will stand aside from the discussion unless/until I read the whole thing.

  8. Krugman was on Cavuto’s show a month or so ago and Cavuto heavily critized Krugman for being a hyper-alarmist and selectively highlighting only negative items for his columns and ignoring anything positive and being inconsistant over what economic indicters to site when appraising the economy.

    I’m sure searching on Fox’s site can locate the video clip.

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