Reddit Reddit reviews Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

We found 21 Reddit comments about Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
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21 Reddit comments about Free to Choose: A Personal Statement:

u/Integralds · 46 pointsr/AskEconomics

There were several Milton Friedmans.

As an academic economist, he made important contributions to business cycle theory, monetary history, and consumption theory. For an overview of Friedman's scientific contributions to economics, see here. These contributions have largely stood the test of time.

But there was another Milton Friedman: the policy advocate. In this role, we can look at his popular books like Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose. Whether one accepts the conclusions of his popular work is nearly orthogonal to whether one accepts the contributions of his scientific work. For a critical account, see Krugman.

u/RKBA · 18 pointsr/reddit.com

There are cattle ranchers who want to voluntarily test every cow for BSE so that they can advertise their beef as being 100% free of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but the government won't allow it because consumer market pressure would force all corporate factory "ranchers" to also test every cow sold. It is throughly appalling that our own government does NOT allow ranchers to test as many of their cattle as the ranchers wish, for whatever diseases they want to test for, and then to advertise those results. This BS law is most definitely NOT to protect the consumer, it is solely to protect the pocketbooks of wealthy agribusiness corporations.


P.S.
I long ago stopped eating ground beef and wieners from fast food joints, and although I haven't totally given up on beef altogether I've cut way back and only purchase beef or chicken that hasn't potentially been ground up along with diseased animals, feces, and who knows what else. I would gladly pay a premium to purchase beef from a rancher that individually tests every cow for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) if I had the choice.

u/icewolfsig226 · 12 pointsr/Libertarian

Here is a play list for Free to Choose video series posted on YouTube, all 10 parts.

Free to Choose - Playlist

There was a follow up 5 part series posted 10 years later that I have yet to watch. This original series was amazing though, and the debate held during the second half of an episode is something that is sorely lacking in today's media.

Also follow the book that goes with it - Free to Choose - they serve to complement one another. Read through most of the book so far.

I haven't read this yet, but it has come to me highly recommended Capitalism and Freedom.

u/[deleted] · 11 pointsr/Conservative
  • Just made the account? Check

  • First sentence about how you'll be downvoted? Check

  • Making up attacks to seem like a victim? Check

  • Bolding random words to make a point? Check

    You don't want to open dialogue. You're responding to vague arguments that no one on this subreddit has made that you imagine what some red neck tea party member would yell at hippies at a OWS rally.

    If you really want to learn about conservatism, here's a few places to start:

    Free to Choose

    Basic Economics

    Uncle Sam's Plantation
u/paulatreides0 · 11 pointsr/neoliberal

Listen to Our Lord Himself.

I'm ashamed and disgusted that none of you had posted this.

Free to Choose > > > > > > > The Bible.

u/georgemoore13 · 7 pointsr/AskReddit

a simple google will return many articles detailing some of the arguments.

A book I'd highly reccomend is Free to Chose (http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman/dp/0156334607)
It goes into some detail regarding the reasons and harms of minimum wage and is a very interesting read regardless of your opinion.

u/haroldp · 4 pointsr/Libertarian

Great list! Let me add some more moderate titles:

17. That which is seen, and that which is not seen - Introduces the "Parable of the broken window" that underpins "Economics in One Lesson"
18. The Road the Serfdom - the case against collectivism, and prescient roadmap for collectivist failure
19. Free to Choose - in Print and Video
20. Capitalism and Freedom - and how they are linked
21. Civil Disobedience - Every other sentence is a poem to human liberty

u/psykocrime · 3 pointsr/Economics

Mmm... I have this but haven't gotten to it yet. Just started Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, but maybe I'll finally start this one next. But I also want to get through Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom and Free To Choose and F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Gah... so many books, so little time to read...

<sigh />

u/kznlol · 3 pointsr/politics

The whole principle of "you get what you pay for" is non-applicable to public provision of goods.

The point was most aptly made, in my view, by Friedman in Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, wherein he discusses 4 possibilities that encompass the two major reasons to purchase something and the two major ways of funding that purchase:

  1. Purchasing for oneself, with one's own money. This results in a purchase that maximizes utility per dollar spent - you get the best deal you can, and you're willing to sacrifice marginal utility if the cost is too high.

  2. Purchasing for oneself, with someone else's money. This results in a purchase that maximizes utility. When it's someone else's money, you really don't care as much, if at all, how well you use the money. This is especially true if you don't have a limit set on the money you're allowed to spend.

  3. Purchasing for someone else, with your own money. This results, for obvious reasons, in a minimization of cost. You want to achieve whatever it is you aim at with the minimum cost possible.

  4. Purchasing for someone else, with someone else's money. You don't give a flying fuck.

    The latter option is the closest analog to public spending in support of something. The people who make the spending decision are using someone else's money (from taxes) and thus do not have a true understanding of how much productivity went into making that money. Nor do they have an understanding of what it is that the people for whom they are spending the money desire out of that purchase, and thus the purchase is already hilariously compromised.

    Public provision of goods, by conventional economic wisdom, requires that the market fails so badly that the inefficiencies inherent in public provision result in less social loss than the market failure does - and in the case of education this hasn't been shown even once, as far as I can tell.

    Moreover, as a side-note, children have no "right" to a quality education. Perhaps we want to make it so that they have a legal right to this, in which case we can create a system like the one we have now (or a much better one founded on vouchers or something similar), but there is nothing about being a human that gives you a right to an education.

    Stop fucking talking about people's "natural rights" and instead discuss, for instance, how providing education to every child will result in good things for a society as a whole, such as a more active political system or less crime, or anything else that you can actually discuss and measure objectively.
u/mMmMmhmMmM · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Yeah, the book is better. I don't know how anyone can read it and not have a different view of the government afterwards.

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-A-Personal-Statement/dp/0156334607/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342371472&sr=8-1

u/bamdastard · 2 pointsr/Economics

Do you want to understand my reasoning or do you want to continue to clutch your pearls on a fainting couch at my conclusions? We differ in our fundamental beliefs regarding human nature. You will probably have to watch more than an hour long youtube video before you understand where I'm coming from. But I'm going to toss one your way anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRLAKD-Vuvk

^

Here's the relevant episode. It's from a video series about the book of the same name from a nobel prize winning economist. Which is very relevant here in /r/economics:

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-A-Personal-Statement/dp/0156334607

u/myp415 · 1 pointr/Economics

Currently reading Free to Choose by Milton Friedman

So far so good....

u/ZuluCharlieRider · 1 pointr/Libertarian
  1. Much as it is now. The proper role of government is to maximize individual liberty; to little government (no law enforcement) and you have tyranny; too much (totalitarian state) and you have tyranny.
  2. Most criminal laws are the domain of the state; local government is preferable over centralized "one size fits all" federal government. Some criminal laws will be federal (e.g. bribing a federal politician). Distributing power to the states serves as a form of experimentation -- all 50 states are free to pursue their own ideas; what works will be adopted by other states; what doesn't work will serve as a lesson to all.
  3. Law enforcement is like medication: too much and it's bad. Not enough when you need it and it's bad. Taking it when you don't have a problem is bad too. Again, the proper role of government is to maximize individual liberty; too little and you have Somalia (a state run by warlords who can kill anyone who opposes them). Too much and you have North Korea (totalitarian state).

    Best book to start: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156334607/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
u/Volsunga · 1 pointr/neoliberal
u/ngroot · 1 pointr/business

You don't even need ECON 101. I would definitely recommend reading Milton Friedman's Free To Choose, though, for a very simple and solid description of a number of economic principles. He makes a very clear and solid argument right at the beginning for why trade protectionism is almost always a terrible idea.

u/BBQ_HaX0r · 1 pointr/Libertarian

If you're serious and looking for some good reading material may I recommend:

Free to Choose - Milton Friedman.

The Law - Bastiat

or something fictional not named Atlas Shrugged, here is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

u/deaduntil · 0 pointsr/politics
u/manageditmyself · -1 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

>If your answer is the same no matter what the question is, then you can't blame people for being somewhat unimpressed with the depth of your ideology.

Actually, you can blame people who refuse to read and understand how and why capitalist economies function the way they do, and then subsequently presume that they know more than others--even going as far to insinuate that one's ideology is lacking 'depth'.

The history is very clear; the more free an economy is, the better it runs. The more hindered an economy is, the worse it does. It's so simple that only intellectuals are the ones that get confused by it.