Travels with Grumpus

The great economist passed away yesterday. From the FT obit:

… his world view was essentially simple: a passionate belief in personal freedom combined with a conviction that free markets were the best way of co-ordinating the activities of dispersed individuals to their mutual enrichment.

UPDATE: As a layman with a deep and abiding faith in free markets, minimal regulation and non-intervention - chalk it up to my days as an employee of a cash-strapped government in an overly-politicized third-world nation - I could always trust Uncle Miltie to be the voice of reason in the rancorous anti-globalization chorus that clogs the public airwaves nowadays.

And he was not afraid to call out one of the most famous rhetorical devices used in a political speech. From the New York Times’ obit:

In 1962, Mr. Friedman took on President John F. Kennedy’s popular inaugural exhortation: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In an introduction to his classic book “Capitalism and Freedom,” a collection of his writings and lectures, he said President Kennedy had got it wrong: You should ask neither.

“What your country can do for you,” Mr. Friedman said, implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward; and “what you can do for your country” assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant. Rather, he said, you should ask, “What I and my compatriots can do through government to help discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all protect our freedom.”

Take that, Harvard boy!

More in the first link above, if you’re so inclined.