Tyler Cowen Directs Us to John Cochrane

John Cochrane has things to say about many of his colleagues at the University of Chicago. As far as polemic goes, I don't think I will ever see a better one:

Comments on the Milton Friedman Institute Protest letter:

As usual, academics need to waste two paragraphs before getting to the point, which starts in the first bullet. To really enjoy this delicious prose you have to first read it all in one place.   * Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image. The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive. Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population, leading to the weakening of a number of struggling local economies in the service of globalized capital, and many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of “market democracy.”    Yes, there are people left on the planet who write and think this way, and no, I’m not making this up. Let’s read this more closely and try to figure out what it means.  

Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image.   If you’re wondering “what’s their objection?”, “how does a MFI hurt them?” you now have the answer.  Translated, “when we go to fashionable lefty cocktail parties in Venezuela, it’s embarrassing to admit who signs our paychecks.” Interestingly, the hundred people who signed this didn’t have the guts even to say “we,” referring to some nebulous “they” as the subject of the sentence.  Let’s read this literally: “We don’t really mind at all if there’s a MFI on campus, but some of our other colleagues, who are too shy to sign this letter, find it all too embarrassing to admit where they work.” If this is the reason for organizing a big protest perhaps someone has too much time on their hands.   Global south   I’ll just pick on this one as a stand-in for all the jargon in this letter.  What does this oxymoron mean, and why do the letter writers use it?  We used to say what we meant, “poor countries. ” That became unfashionable, in part because poverty is sometimes a bit of your own doing and not a state of pure victimhood.  So, it became polite to call dysfunctional backwaters “developing.” That was already a lie (or at best highly wishful thinking) since the whole point is that they aren’t developing.  But now bien-pensant circles don’t want to endorse “development” as a worthwhile goal anymore.   “South” – well, nice places like Australia, New Zealand and Chile are there too (at least from a curiously North-American and European-centric perspective).  So now it’s called “global south,” which though rather poor as directions for actually getting anywhere, identifies the speaker as the caring sort of person who always uses the politically correct word.    The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades…   Notice the interesting voice of the verb. Let’s call it the “accusatory passive.” “Has been put in place...” By who, I (or any decent writer) would want to know?  Unnamed dark forces are at work.   Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population... weakening … struggling local economies   I can think of lots of words to describe what’s going on in, say, China and India, as well as what happened previously to countries that adopted the “neoliberal global order” like Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Billions of people are leading dramatically freer, healthier, longer and more prosperous lives than they were a generation ago.   Of course, we all face plenty of problems. I worry about environmental catastrophes, and their political, social and economic aftermath.  Many people are suffering, primarily in pockets of kleptocracy and anarchy.  Life’s pretty bleak about 5 blocks west of the University of Chicago. In my professional life, I worry about inflation, chaotic markets, and their possible death by regulation. There is a lot for thoughtful economists and social scientists to do. But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their “local economies,” trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death.   This is just the big lie theory at work. Say something often enough and people will start to believe it. It helps especially if what you say is vague and meaningless. Ok, I’ll try to be polite; a lie is deliberate and this is more like a willful disregard for the facts. Still, if you start with the premise that the last 40 or so years, including the fall of communism, and the [economic] opening of China and India are “negative for much of the world’s population,” you just don’t have any business being a social scientist. You don’t stand a chance of contributing something serious to the problems that we actually do face.     the service of globalized capital..   was wondering who the subject of all these passive sentences is. Now I’m beginning to get the idea. This view has a particularly dark history. I’ll give you a hint:  “Globalized capital” has names like Goldman and Sachs.    many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of 'market democracy.'   What a doozy! What can this actually mean? Given the counterpoint “market democracy” (what we live in, I presume) I suspect “democratic” here means “democratic” as in “people’s democratic republic”, i.e. the government runs everything.  Monetization is democratization; it means things are accessible to anyone, not just the politically connected. That observation was, among many other things, Milton Friedman’s genius.   Once again, the verb tenses and subjects are telling. “The substitution.” Who did this substitution? Maybe globalized capital, or the international banking conspiracy? Maybe it’s the trilateral commission.    The closing bullet point is fun as a reminder of how petty academic squabbles can be after we strip off all the big words, fancy pretentions and meaningless jargon.   * In the interests of equity and balance, many of us feel that the University ought to reconsider contributing to the proposed Milton Friedman Institute, which will inevitably be a powerful magnet for scholars and donors who share a specific set of interests and values to the exclusion of others, whether this is openly acknowledged or not.   Translation:  we publicly charge the faculty committee who put this thing together, and promise a non-partisan non-directed research institute (me included), with lying through their teeth.  This sentence adds a – well let’s be polite and call it a “factual inaccuracy.” The whole point is not “University contribution.” The whole point is to try to get private donors who see the benefits of Milton Friedman’s legacy to support economics research here.   If the writers understood the first thing about money, that it is fungible, they might understand which side of their bread is buttered.   Still others believe that, given the influx of private contributions to the MFI, the University now has the opportunity to provide roughly equivalent resources for critical scholarly work that seeks out alternatives to recent economic, social, and political developments.     Finally, we get to the point! We can get over our “distress” at admitting where we work, but what we want is to do some of our own “substitution of monetization for democratization.” And with none of the niceties about non-partisan, non-ideological, open-minded research in the Milton Friedman founding documents either – this money is reserved for people who can get the right answers and belong to the right clubs.  And we’re not planning to ask our sympathizers to pony up money either. Basically, we want the Friedman Institute money.     Virtually all of us are distressed by the position the University has taken and by the process through which decisions have been made.   And we end with good old “process.”   When you can’t really complain on the merits, you can always gum up the works by complaining about “process.” Now you know why it takes so long for a university ever to do anything.   If it’s sad to see what 101 professionally distinguished minds at the University of Chicago think about free markets at all, it is to me sadder still how atrociously written this letter is. These people devote their lives to writing on social issues, and teaching freshmen (including mine) how to think and write clearly.  Yet it’s awful.   The letter starts with two paragraphs of meaningless throat-clearing. (“This is a question of the meaning of the University’s investments, in all senses.”  What in the world does that sentence actually mean?)  I learned to delete throat-clearing in the first day of Writing 101.  It’s all written in the passive, or with vague subjects.  “Many” should not be the subject of any sentence. You should never write “has been put in place,” you should say who put something in place. You should take responsibility in your writing. Write “we,” not “many colleagues.”  The final paragraphs wander around without saying much of anything.     The content of course is worse. There isn’t even an idea here, a concrete proposition about the human condition that one can disagree with, buttress or question with facts. It just slings a bunch of jargon, most of which has a real meaning opposite to the literal. “Global South,” “neoliberal global order,” “the service of globalized capital,” “substitution of monetization for democratization.” George Orwell would be proud.   I’m not a good writer. I admire great prose, and I attempt to fill the spaces between equations of my papers with comprehensible words. But even I can recognize atrocious prose when I see it.  Really, guys and gals, if a Freshman handed this in to one of your classes, could you possibly give any grade above C- and cover it with red ink?   I was quoted as saying “drivel,” and I meant it, not as an insult but as a technically correct description of a piece of prose. We can – and should – happily disagree on all sorts of matters of fact and interpretation, clearly stated, and openly discussed. But there’s nothing here to discuss, it’s just mush. The saddest aspect of this whole sorry affair is that 100 faculty at such a distinguished institution can sign their names – and with them their intellectual reputations and their sacred honor -- to such utter drivel.   Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible.  He favored, among other things, legalizing drugs, school choice, and volunteer army. To call him or his political legacy “right wing” is simply ignorant, and I mean that also as a technically accurate description rather than an insult.  (Of course, he also has a legacy in the economics community as a first-rate researcher, which is what the MFI will do and honor.)      So here’s my question: If you’re embarrassed by this legacy, if you worry that it will tarnish the University’s reputation, just what is it that you good-thinking guys and gals have against human freedom?

---

Comments

[Bloix]

Cochran on Friedman and freedom:
Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic... So here’s my question: If you’re embarrassed by this legacy, if you worry that it will tarnish the University’s reputation, just what is it that you good-thinking guys and gals have against human freedom?

Delong on Friedman and freedom:
But, perhaps more seriously, Friedman ducked the big questions regarding the relationship between economic freedom and political liberty, and he was completely incapable of seeing that political liberty is both a negative and a positive liberty: freedom from tyranny and oppression but also the freedom and power to decide on and accomplish our common purposes. These are the master questions of history and moral philosophy, and for all his brilliance and hard work, Friedman is of absolutely no help in answering them. As Posner says, Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom "flunks the test of accuracy of prediction … [The] view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy [is] extreme and inaccurate." Yet Friedman bought into that Hayekian view. And in so doing, he ultimately led his followers, and tried to lead the rest of us, down a false path.

[William Smith]

Man, if I didn't know professorial types, especially in much more passive-aggressive places than the U of Chicago, I'd call BS. However, most of the U of Chicago profs with which I am familiar, mostly from law, medicine/bioethics and economics, would never be so faint of heart as to use "they" when they mean "we".

[ogmb]

Uhh, this is pretty much unreadable in quote-in-quote, so why not just link to the original or highlight the key points? Btw, "global south" is not an oxymoron, it's to clarify they're not talking about Dixie.

[L2P]

Really? You don't think you'll see a better polemic than "I think these guys use the passive voice too much, and they hate freedom*?"

*Freedom (tm) not necessarily Freedom.

[derrida derider]

Yeah, ogmb, but as an Australian the term "the south" as a proxy for "the poor" arouses some irritation. The basic point is that it is inaccurate to the point of meaninglesssness (most of Asia is both poor and north of the equator, for instance), and is only used to identify the speaker as part of a club.

Cochrane is right that the letter is appallingly bad prose and appallingly bad reasoning, to the degree that it discredits those who signed it. And whatever his politics Milton Friedman was the most distinguished figure that the Uni of Chicago has produced, so it is churlish to oppose an Institute in his honour.

That said I reckon Cochrane would do better tactically to lay off the crude ideology a bit, the better to highlight his opponents'. The purpose of the response is not to convert anti-globalists into free-marketers, but to get the MFI funded.

[ogmb]

I agree the term is poor (as is the whole letter, which smacks of writing by committee), but "global south" is not an oxymoron, as Cochrane claims. Presumably Cochrane thinks if you use "global" you must refer to both hemispheres, which is contradicted by "south", where you speak of only one. But that's nonsense, or otherwise "British Midlands" would be an oxymoron too.

About the rest of the rejoinder, I'm with L2P in expressing wonderment that Brad thinks this is an apex in polemic writing. Especially with such an awful original document as foil, this is barely better than an undergrad op-ed for the campus daily. 101 Profs: C-, Cochrane: C+. Didn't the U of C play in the majors once?

[The Raven]

Hey, Friedman's feeding us corvids! No complaints here. But for hominids, he did work for they tyrannical Pinochet who is hated in Latin America and provided rhetorical cover for many other tyrants. But no complaints here--keep those dead bodies coming!

Caw!

[Nick]

Friedman would not be my first choice to have an institute named after him, but since we are living with a Ronald Reagan Airport (not to mention Ted Stevens), I am resigned to the fact that all the right-wing villains in the pantheon will get some nice building or institute named after them, as long as they didn't order the death squads or genocide personally.

Also, I take exception to the line

"when we go to fashionable lefty cocktail parties in Venezuela, it’s embarrassing to admit who signs our paychecks.”

That's just embarassing, everyone knows all the cool left-wing cocktail parties are in Havana. And when am I going to get an invitation already? I've written enough words defending Naomi Klein's hit job on Friedman and the Chicago School from the likes of Tyler Cowen to get at least a couple of free Mojitos from somebody.

[JoeV]

Professor, you forgot to append "Why oh why can't we have better critics of neoliberal orthodoxy?"

[Michael McIntyre]

The Milton Friedman Institute will have all the scholarly objectivity of the Hoover Institution. To quote from Cochrane et al.'s own proposal:

"Following Friedman’s lead, the design and evaluation of economic policy requires analyses that respect the incentives of individuals and the essential role of markets in allocating goods and services. As Friedman and others continually demonstrated, design of public policy without regard to market alternatives has adverse social consequences.

"The intellectual focus of the institute would reflect the traditions of the Chicago School and typify some of Milton Friedman’s most interesting academic work, including his seminal work on the permanent income theory of consumption, his critical analysis of monetary policy, and his advocacy for market alternatives to ill conceived policy initiatives. This connection of the proposed institute to the legacy of Milton Friedman’s intellectual contributions provides a special opportunity to recognize the distinguished place held by Friedman at Chicago and throughout the world. We recommend naming the institute The Milton Friedman Institute to honor Friedman’s legacy and to indicate how the work of the Institute will, like the work of Friedman, have a deep influence on economic theory and policy around the globe."

Cochrane's bio has its own unintentional funny bits. He's the Myron Scholes Professor of Finance at the U of C GSB, where his work focuses on asset pricing. Hell, why don't they just name him the Long Term Capital Management Professor of Bubbles? And he's married to . . . wait for it . . . Elizabeth Fama! I guess now we know why Richard Thaler wasn't on the MFI committee!

[nick]

While the letter has a certain stench of committee, the polemic is laughable in its unearned self-satisfaction....this is the old "attack prose style because it's easier than attacking ideas" move, Abuse of Orwell 101: "all passive constructions mean you don't take responsiblity for your actions!" "Global south" means something. "Globalized capital" has a (left) analysis behind it. Particularly craven, indeed disgusting, is his insinuation of anti-semitism (the Goldman Sachs line)--as if all critique of capitalism was anti-Semitic. This guy seems like a culture-wars hack to me, Brad--I don't understand your apparent approval......

[ogmb]

Also, come to think of it, I'm not sure why Cochrane thinks it's a good idea to roll out the China as a neoliberal success story. Clearly the Chinese leadership is out to demonstrate that economic freedom and socio-political freedom are not interlinked, that you can provide one without the other, and thus directly contradict Friedman: "Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked." Looks like Cochrane is right in his self-assessment that he "[attempts] to fill the spaces between equations of my papers with comprehensible words". Better stick to equations next time.

[no]

A petition is not a scientific paper. And getting 101 diverse people to sign *anything* requires some diffuse wording so everyone can get behind it. Petitions are also not meant to offer sharp analysis.

Criticizing a petition as if it was meant to be a scientific paper or a clear individual analysis is just stupid.

[Joe S.]

Good polemic? Naaah.

A good polemic is where you disagree with every word, and keep on reading. The Communist Manifesto is good polemic. Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France ("economists and sophisters") is good polemic. (I agree with about 70% of it; I apply this test to the parts I don't like.) Maistre is good polemic. Hobbes is good polemic. (Same note as Burke, although I agree with about half of Hobbes.)

Cochrane's piece is not good polemic. I agree with more than half of it, but can't bother myself to follow it.

[rea]

Perhaps, as a compromise, they could name it the Friedman/Pinochet Institute.

[Kelly]

Haiti: Mud Cakes Become Staple Diet as Cost of Food Soars Beyond a Family's Reach
Tuesday 29 July 2008

by: Rory Carroll, The Guardian UK

Port-au-Prince - At first sight the business resembles a thriving pottery. In a dusty courtyard women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun.

The craftsmanship is rough and the finished products are uneven. But customers do not object. This is Citè Soleil, Haiti's most notorious slum, and these platters are not to hold food. They are food.

Brittle and gritty - and as revolting as they sound - these are "mud cakes". For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.

It is not for the taste and nutrition - smidgins of salt and margarine do not disguise what is essentially dirt, and the Guardian can testify that the aftertaste lingers - but because they are the cheapest and increasingly only way to fill bellies.

"It stops the hunger," said Marie-Carmelle Baptiste, 35, a producer, eyeing up her stock laid out in rows. She did not embroider their appeal. "You eat them when you have to."

These days many people have to. The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt. [What possible good would it do them to revolt? Do they really think they would be better off if they threw out the bums who are running the country now? Who would they replace them with?] Hunger burns are called "swallowing Clorox", a brand of bleach.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts Haiti's food import bill will leap 80% this year, the fastest in the world. Food riots toppled the prime minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies curbed prices and bought calm but the cash-strapped government is gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected.

According to the UN, two-thirds of Haitians live on less than 50p a day and half are undernourished. "Food is available but people cannot afford to buy it. If the situation gets worse we could have starvation in the next six to 12 months," said Prospery Raymond, country director of the UK-based aid agency Christian Aid.

Until recently this Caribbean nation, which vies with Afghanistan for appalling human development statistics, had been showing signs of recovery: political stability, new roads and infrastructure, less gang warfare. "We had been going in the right direction and this crisis threatens that," said Eloune Doreus, the vice-president of parliament.

As desperation rises so does production of mud cakes, an unofficial misery index. Now even bakers are struggling. Trucked in from a clay-rich area outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, the mud is costlier but cakes still sell for 1.3p each, about the only item immune from inflation. "We need to raise our prices but it's their last resort and people won't tolerate it," lamented Baptiste, the CitÈ Soleil baker.

Vendors of other foods who have increased prices have been left with unsold stock. In the Policard slum, a jumble of broken concrete clinging to a mountainside, the Ducasse family tripled the price of its fritters because of surging flour prices. "Our sales have fallen by half," said Jean Ducasse, 49, poking at his tray of shrivelled wares.

The signs of crisis are everywhere. Aid agency feeding centres reported that the numbers seeking help have tripled. At a center in the Fort Mercredi slum rail-thin women cradled infants with yellowing hair, a symptom of malnutrition. "Now we're having to feed the mothers as well as the babies," said Antonine Saint-Quitte, a nurse.

In rural areas the situation seems even worse, prompting a continued drift to the slums and their mirage of opportunities. Lillian Guerrick, 56, a subsistence farmer near Cap Haitien, yanked her seven grandchildren from school because there was barely money for food let alone fees. "I've no choice," she said, a touch defensive, amid wizened corn stalks.

Anecdotal evidence suggests school attendance nationwide has dropped and that those who do make it to class are sometimes too hungry to concentrate. "I use jokes to try to stimulate my students, to wake them up," said Smirnoff Eugene, 25, a Port-au-Prince teacher.

Border crossings to the Dominican Republic are jammed with throngs of merchants hunting lower prices in their relatively prosperous neighbour. [Can that be right; the more prosperous country has lower prices? I'd like Paul Krugman to explain that.]

"Beep beep, out of the way!" yelled one teenage boy, sweating, veins throbbing, as he heaved a wheelbarrow impossibly overloaded with onions through a crowd at Ouanaminthe's border bridge.

Haiti's woes stem from global economic trends of higher oil and food prices, plus reduced remittances from migrant relatives affected by the US downturn. What makes the country especially vulnerable, however, is its almost total reliance on food imports.

Domestic agriculture is a disaster. The slashing and burning of forests for farming and charcoal has degraded the soil and chronic under-investment has rendered rural infrastructure at best rickety, at worst non-existent.

The woes were compounded by a decision in the 1980s to lift tariffs, when international prices were lower, and flood the country with cheap imported rice and vegetables. Consumers gained and the IMF applauded but domestic farmers went bankrupt and the Artibonite valley, the country's breadbasket, atrophied.

Now that imports are rocketing in price the government has vowed to rebuild the withered agriculture but that is a herculean task given scant resources, degraded soil and land ownership disputes.

There is a hopeful precedent. A growing franchise of localised dairies known as Let Agogo (Creole for Unlimited Milk) has organised small farmers to transport and market milk, generating jobs and income and cutting Haiti's £20m annual milk import bill.

President Renè Prèval has hailed the scheme as a model but Michel Chancy, a driving force of Veterimed, a non-governmental organization which backs the dairies, was wary. "For 20 years politicians have been talking about reviving agriculture but didn't actually do anything. If this food crisis forces them to act then it is a big opportunity." That was a big if, he said.

Walk along a beach in the morning and you find Haitians gazing at the azure ocean horizon, dreaming of escape. They are fiercely proud of their history in overthrowing slavery and colonialism but these days the US, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic - anywhere but home - seems the best option.

The only thing stopping an exodus are US coastguard patrols, said Herman Janvier, 30, a fishermen on Cap Haitian, a smuggling point. "People want out of here. It's like we're almost dead people."

The last time Janvier tried to flee he was intercepted and interned at Guantanamo Bay. "I offered to join the American army. I offered to clean their base. They said no. So I am back here, on a boat with no motor, doing what I can to survive."

[PaulC]

This letter got a lot less interesting once I figured out it wasn't written by the same guy who defended OJ.

[JO'N]

Dsquared calls "globollocks" on Cochrane at crookedtimber.org:

"I’ve no idea why so many people are calling it a “fantastic polemic” -- you could click randomly on a list of right wing blogs and have at least a 50% chance of finding a better cliche-ridden philippic against those terrible left-wing academicessess. I suspect it’s the Milton Friedman Reality Distortion Field Generator, the same strange psychophysical device that makes people believe that Friedman was a principled opponent of the PATRIOT Act and never really knew what Pinochet was planning when he recommended that trade union rights should be removed. The MFRDFG is powered by fifty per cent fear of being redbaited and fifty per cent disdain for dirty fucking hippies, and I’d regard it as a harmless intellectual defence mechanism if it didn’t generate industrial pollution in the form of toxic criticisms of JK Galbraith and/or Paul Sweezy."

[JPS]

"Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic."

But when he visited Chile in 1975 he stood a few hundred yards from a torture center in downtown Santiago and praised the Chilean Junta for taking "necessary" steps. Not much love of freedom there.

[Doctor Jay]

You know, all I could think of when I read that was "Geez, man. Take a BREATH! Have you ever heard of these things called paragraphs?"

[baileyman]

You're free to the extent you have political influence.

[Mark Gaughan]

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

[Barry]

Go to the Crooked Timber debate on this.

"I wonder if they will accept donations denominated in Airmiles?"

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/08/01/i-wonder-if-they-will-accept-donations-denominated-in-airmiles/

(I would post a f-ing link, but the f-ing Typepad software s-words donkey c-words)

[Right to read]

«Milton Friedman stood for freedom, social, political, and economic. He realized that they are inextricably linked. If the government controls your job or your business, dissent is impossible.» The intellectual dishonesty here is that the two statements are quite unrelated, as Friedman was in practice against restrictions on freedom imposed by governments on big business, not as much by anything or anybody else. If your business or your job is controlled by *anybody*, including big business, dissent is impossible. In particular because like his fellow libertarians (and Hayek) he used to exagerate wildly about the extent of government control: as long as one can emigrate freely, there is no government control. Just as no USA worker is forced to work for Wal*mart (one can always try the lotto!) no USA resident is forced to submit to the USA government (just move to North Korea!). USA residents, persons and corporations, pay taxes and obey regulations solely out of their free choice to remain resident in the USA; if they don't like that, they can always walk out of it, just like a Wal*mart workers can work somewhere else if they don't like their jobs. «You're free to the extent you have political influence.» That's one of the wisest observations I have seen. In practice, if anybody has power over (and it is a matter of degree) your job or your business, dissent is impossible (and that's a matter of degree too), and that means that lovers of freedom are not anti government any more than they are anti big business; the issue is minimizing the power anybody has over your choices, and this can well mean big government as a counterbalance to big business, as well as smaller roles for both big business and government. The goal is more substantial freedom (including from extreme want, from great risks, ...), not more freedom from government for the benefit of big business. And as to this Friedman and even more so his pseudo-libertarian followers are all utter shysters.