Rating: 
Summary: Boring and boring...Now I understand...
Review: Now I understand how this illustrious liberal writer must have won so many people to his cause. The book is so boring, so repetitive, with such a bad writing, that maybe people agree with him fast, just for the sake of having his mouth shut up!I see some points he tries to make, but mos of them are silly and naive. Maybe he would not have written this kind of thing had he wrote in our century...
Rating: 
Summary: Outdated, basket case.
Review: This outdated and stupid book, written more than forty years ago, continues to sell and spread its blurred vision of "Capitalism RUles It All". Friedman must be proud. Total capitalism has won. Any miserable governmental initiative related to social welfare is seen like an atrocity that will make stocks to fall.. Friedman clearly despises the average, poor human being. He's a basket case, in my opinion (a rich one, selling this junk of a book along the world.) Certainly, if he was younger, he would now be some kind of CEO intenting to fire another thousand employees to make his stockshare raise their value. Christ, he thinks that even the post mail should be given to private hands!!! This book is outrageous, immoral. It tries to induce the reader that all the plagues are due to government intervention. When it comes to corporate greed, he dismisses this problems simply by saying that the greed from one corporate checks the greed from another. Nevermind about monopoly! It would never last! (há, há!). This book is comedy, a bad one by the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone says they love freedom but...
Review: few actually define their terms. It is obvious that most of the people who speak out against books like this one have never read anything from an individualist, classical liberal or otherwise pro-market point of view. There is nothing noble about thinking that the government must do everything for everyone (which also presupposes that everyone must do as they are told by the government). If you have only heard the nonsensical leftist view of "capitalism" this is a book for you. WARNING: It will challenge you to actually think about the subject, not just have a knee-jerk reaction! One previous review here quoted the following from Milton Friedman, in the Financial Times (UK) June 2003: "The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did." From these two sentences the reviewer attempted to conclude: "There you are, the ideas of this book have been repudiated by the man himself. What more evidence do you need to show they are wrong?" This is typical of the low level of thought that is used to criticize works like this. A slight change in opinion about a particular issue in NO way constitutes a "repudiation" of a lifetime's work. Just read it for yourself and see what you have been missing!
Rating:
Summary: A world of lies
Review: This books seemed to me just a world of lies. Besides the bad writing style of the author, this books just su...ks. Friedman seems to live in a world where there is no monopoly, where the companies do not almost anything to get richer, including faking their accountancy (as recent scandals show); firing thousands of employess in the name of "reengineering"; creating conglomerates to dominate a specific market; destroying foreign countrie's currencies with specultative atacks made by "investors" that does not constroy nothing, just speculate; pressing governments to abolish hard earned social rights, even if they are minor ones; charging the common people with scorching interest rates when giving loans; etc, etc. Friedman book is the worst thing you can get if you are interested in reading something about ecnomy. This obviously capitalism-corrupted writer simply can't have a sense of seeing the two sides. Here in this book he's on a race to glorify capitalism, nothing more. I despise this book.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly insane!
Review: Seldom have I read something so stupid like this book. IT's badly written, false, it seems almost that the writer was paid by Wall Street to write it. This is just capitalist junk written to attend capitalist's demands. Yeah, take the government away from every business on Earth, so we can take our profits freely and slave the poor population forever. Man this book is so stupid it makes wanna vomit.
Rating:
Summary: Friendman's ideas discredited by who?
Review: "The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did."
Milton Friedman, Financial Times (UK) June 2003
There you are, the ideas of this book have been repudiated by the man himself. What more evidence do you need to show they are wrong?
Rating:
Summary: Essential work in present WTO - North / South negociations
Review: The WTO discussions just failed an other round in the recent Caucun discussions. Well, for how much longer, you may ask? And is there any wonder to that? As long as the North will keep on sitting upon the world's monetary wealth and upon the world's knowledge and know-how reservoirs, all the while still SHAMELESSLY SUBSIDISING THEIR OWN LOCAL AGRICULTURE! As long as this doesn't change, I'm glad the Southern Countries will never align. AND RIGHT THEY ARE! I totally understand them and even agree with them. While the Northern Hemisphere States are preaching free-trade and open borders on one side, on the other side they are de facto standing for one of the worst mercantilistic attitude towards their own heavily subsidised agriculture. And at they same time everybody is complaining and whining for more growth, for more expansion, for economic recovery, and so forth, while ignoring that the Southern Hemisphere Countries remain the biggest and most promising world markets still open for real and substantial long-term growth... Such a petty POLITICAL NONSENSE... It won't be before a fairer attitude towards the Southern States of the World and their export goods will finally be adopted that the North will have plenty of space left to grow their own export industries. This is one of the best way, if not the only one, to subsidise international growth abroad for the wealthy developped Northern States that faces a miserable lack of long-term growth perspectives, all the while shamelessly heavily subsidising their own agricultural and first sector industrial activity. Why don't we get it? Because we are still such a long long way from a truly free-trading world system, being held hostages to the politicians dead-talk and hypocrisy, being made the slaves of local interests and local political lobbies... And the Europeans are the champions of such a retrograde attitude. France, Spain, Italy and other European nations, with their agricultural heavily subsidised policies, are probably the main culprits of such an ABSURD and silly world-wide situation. Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate European agricultural products, I like French wine, I like Swiss cheese and so forth, but I think people should finally be ready and honest enough to view such items and goods for what they really are, i.e. luxury goods, and very expensive ones at that. The private consumer and not the tax-payer should be made to pay the bill for such items, and least of all, it is certainly NOT the developping Southern Countries of the World that should be made to pay the bill of passeist European politicians willing to linger in an illusionary agricultural autonomous and self-sufficient era, both at the expanse of the development of the South, and now also at the expanse of their own industries and economies, growth and international expansion... It is my view that the agricultural policies of both Euro-zone and USA should be progressively but DEFINITIVELY AND CONSISTENTLY AXED. The sooner the better. No one will be able to postpone this indefinitely, as both Northern and Southern hemispheres are suffering from such illusory and highly unjust policies. This simply is not fair and not honest, and everybody will be paying the bill untill things change... Each and everyone would have something to gain from a little bit more honesty and a little bit more transparency in world-politics. After fourty years, this book is still preaching to an unconverted world-wide political audience.
Rating: 
Summary: good insights, certain short comings
Review: milton friedman is probably the most influential economist since superstar john maynard keynes turned the field of economics on its head. friedman is an uncompromising critic of keynes, and a fervent advocate of the free market (however with certain important exceptions). this book shows the reader why most social goods should be supplied by the workings of the free market rather than by the planning of government bureucrats. friedman is however much more of a conservative in his views of the role of goverment compared to the radical school of austrian economics - especially in their contradicting views of monetary policy. of special importance is the socalled austrian theory of the business cycle which you should know to understand why friedmans monetarism is only a step in the right direction away from the destructive inflationist policies of the keynesians. however this is a good place to learn some basic economic insights. if you liked this book you should check out thomas sowells 'basic economics' which is somewhat semi-austrian and very easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: Capitalism and Murder: dry reading along the way
Review: This master of the neoliberal cause offers nothing new in this book, in truth a compilation of a bunch of lectures given by the author back in the sixties!!! IF Friedman is naive enough to think that private enterprise is the answer to all of us, he must be crazy. If he thinks that the big corporations are interested in prosperity for anyone eles beside themselves, you're living in a dream world. Well, the recent lack of energy in New York and CHicago is a good example... THis book is bul...it...Only that.
Rating: 
Summary: Classical liberalism for modern America
Review: Milton Friedman _Capitalism and Freedom_ presents an analysis of modern America (at least the America of 1960) against the values of classical liberalism. First he begins with an arguement that economic freedoms can't be separated from other personal freedoms, such as speech or privacy. He than lays out the basic values of classical liberalism and proceeds to test the American experience in various areas of public policy against this principles. Of course he finds that the country has moved away from the path to freedom, as he sees it, and presents various routes to its return. For the most part I enjoyed the book but some areas, such as in fiscal and monetary problems, I had difficulty since I have no economics training. While Friedman's arguements are interesting they are hardly groundbreaking. Anyone familar with the development of liberal thought will be able to anticipate his point of view. But it is refreshing to see these ideas held up to American public policy.
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