Rating: 
Summary: Chosen Freedom
Review: Friedman speaks soft; truth
Progressive masterplan; bigger
They cannot listen
Rating: 
Summary: Facts And Intellectual Honesty From A Great (Free) Mind
Review: I came onto this book a few decades ago, but I did not immeditely read it from cover to cover. The parts I read nevertheless had a lasting influence on my world view, like some kind of an inoculation. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Eastern collectivist ideals seem to have somehow pervasively invaded Europe's political and bureaucratic landscape in a strange hybrid form of regulated and socially controlled capitalism. Some of the truths distilled in this book seem to be in need of being re-discovered, especially in Europe, and although the book might appear outdated, Milton Friedman's no-nonsense pragmatic intellectualism is still highly valid today. Let it also be said that free-market economies are probably some of the few models that are most compatible with various christian biblical points of view, in that they preach contentment with one's own situation (help thyself and heaven shall help thee) before revolutions and wealth-redistribution tactics (an earthly paradise of evenly re-re-re-distributed wealth is both anti-scriptural and irrational, and would not last for more than a few minutes without a brutal and ruthless dictatorship, as men and nations were never created equal, be it in physical features, ability or talent). If charity and kindness of heart should be more of personal concern rather than being socially institutionalized and legally enforced, they have historically been proven as most inefficient, partial and unjust when becoming part of a planified political agenda. In the same vein, freedom can only hardly be forced upon individuals and societies if there is yet no real longing for it (as in everything else, good timing is almost everything...)To come back to the content of the book, Free To Choose is what one may call an economic analysis of politics, for the layman that is. The works of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises offer more in-depth studies on economics, social and behavioural sciences. For a more philosophical approach of the libertarian ideology, some of the works written by Ayn Rand and co-authors are highly recommended. Gary North has, with his studies on Christian Biblical Economics, done something similar to Richard Posner's Economic Analysis of Law, but applied it to the writings of the Bible in what one could call an economic analysis of Christian and OT Scriptures (as a Christian, you do not necessarily have to share his postmillennial, anti-dispensationalist point of view). The fact is that there is a great plenty of sound authors of economic analysis and its many ramifications. Max Weber, for example, in Spirit of Protestantism, was the first to have an objective sociological glance at the impact of various christian confessions (and puritan faith in the after-life) upon the psychology of economic behaviour and purse strategies (a must read if you wish to widen your horizontal frontiers) but of course, the list of authors that have attempted to gain a behavioural insight into the activities of man with an economic telescope doesn't end here... The fact is that everything could be analyzed from the point of view of economics and the costs of opportunity (witness Richard Posner's Sex and Reason), so that economic analysis remains a very powerfull tool that opens up a vast and almost endless amount of subjects to rational enquiry...
Rating: 
Summary: Nonsense
Review: I don't want to launch into a rant but this is clearly arrant nonsense. Freedom? What about freedom for immigrants to enter the United States unhindered by customs officials, freedom for people to assert their right to equal pay and opportunities, freedom to fight back against racism, sexism and homophobia and freedom not to be "disappeared" by mid-seventies Chilean governments - just for having the courage to speak out?
Rating: 
Summary: A rehash of laissez faire economics
Review: I expected more from Milton Friedman. "Free to Choose" has been done before and better by Adam Smith. The arguments Friedman presents may be persuasive to the historically naive, but are in fact full of the same fallacies which afflicted Adam Smith. The sad part is that the fallacies in laissez-faire economics have long been addressed by authors from Ricardo to Marx, from Keynes to Galbraith. Unfortunately, Friedman adds nothing new to the debate in this book. This book is simply fuel for the propaganda machine of the new Right. It is right-wing "pop" economics for the masses, written in the dawn of Thatcherism.
Rating:
Summary: The best way for an economy to work
Review: I have never particularly loved Economics as a subject. Therefore I found it difficult to be tremendously excited by this book. But the arguments made in it , concerning the wisdom of basing our economic life primarily on decisions of individuals, and not on government regulation do make sense to me. Also the whole tone of the work which is a gently persuasive one rather than one which harshly and angrily casts into the lower world all opposition, appealed to me.
Finally. It is clear that in providing opportunity to its citizens to realize their own potential and pursue their own happiness, the economies of the West, and most especially of the United States have done far better than those of the East including that of the now defunct Soviet Union.
It is important to note however that this system today is not simply a laissez - faire one which allows for an endless war of all upon all, but is modified by social welfare measures.
Rating:
Summary: Ahistorical Non sense
Review: I have the 1980 edition. Introduction Page 3 - "(The U.S.) started with a clean slate...and an empty continent to conquer." I guess Milton forgot about the Natives already living here. Further down the page - "it took 19 out of 20 wokers to feed the (population)." Cross out 'workers' and put in slaves and indentured servants. Freidman's America is simply for the well to do. Many more examples of his ahistorical method can be gleened by close reading of his text.
Rating:
Summary: educational
Review: I often think of this book in the context of Nancy Reagan's simplistic 'Just Say No' campaign of the '80s. While her campaign to inculcate in children the idea that drug abuse was something best to be avoided was admirable, the implicit message she conveyed was that the discussion about drugs was as simple as saying 'no.' Now, an economist would aver that, in fact, the argument is not so simple as that because, in addition to consideration of the deleterious effects of drug abuse that play into the equation, one must also do a cost-benefit analysis of the effect of drug criminilization on society, etc., etc., etc. At least, this is what Friedman would argue, and, to my mind, it is a stunning way in which to view our world through the dispassionate lens of economic analysis. My father recommended this book to me several years ago, having read it while he was in graduate school. Friedman (to whom neither my father nor I are related) argues, in effect, that the most important things a society can provide for its citizens is the freedom to choose--free capital markets, free choice in education, free to use drugs if you so choose, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Economics for the non-economist
Review: I purchased this book as an adjunct for a course I was taking. Though I am not focused on economics career-wise, I found this book took the subject and expanded it to areas that made me realize how interconnected the basic tenets of economics are in our every day life. It was a very interesting read and still would have been even if I was not taking an economics class.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, What a Breath of Fresh Air
Review: If only I and Trotsky had this book back in 1917, what a world of difference it could have made. I realize now after reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Larry Elder's book The Ten Things You Can't Say In America that I was wrong. In that communistic and socialistic systems only contriubute to make the public poorer and worse off. Now if only we could convince all the Democrats and other Socialists of the their folly.
Rating:
Summary: Freedom by Friedman
Review: If you believe that you are a freeagent exercising freewill, this is the next step in the evolution of such thought.
|
