Wow, Moore was a lot less charming than Friedman when we was a teenager.

Wow. Actual discussion over things that affect us all.

Milton Friedman is a Putz!

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The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - findthumb requested by lucky760.

I dunno, he called the Great Depression for what it was:
"Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."-If anyone's a putz it's Moore and his whiny, self-supporting micro vs. macro schtick.

Bowling For Columbine in a nutshell: No guns, no more problems. Horseshit.

That was a totally disingenuous argument from Friedman.

Yes, at some point you must place a dollar figure on human life, but it depends on what is going to be done with the money saved. If you say, we're not going to treat a dozen patients with a rare disease that would cost the state tens of millions of dollars, and instead use that money on highway safety, or to improve healthcare for others, with the net impact that you save MORE lives with the money, that is a valid argument.

What he's proposing is that some billionaire (or at the least, multi-millionaire) should pocket a few million extra they saved by not installing the safety feature.

Not all money is equal. That's easy to prove.

Give a million dollars to ten families that are on the edge of bankruptcy and it will change their lives.

Give a million dollars to Mitt Romney and he'll forget your name as soon as you walk out of the room.

Give a million to Obama and he'll spend it on a nice golf vacation. Better make it at least 10, the dude has an entourage.

Fuck Friedman. The guys a fucking scumbag, and I'm glad he's dead.

Wow, so thin!

It's annoying how he talks down to him and at the same time he knows he's wrong. Moore held his ground pretty well for basically a child talking to a supposed expert. Friedman actually seemed pretty nervous at times.

Fuck Moore. The guys a fucking scumbag, and I'm sad he's not dead.

I'm surprised someone put something intelligent on the sift.

Only liberal leftest allowed here and no decrementing thoughts.

I guess a permanent ban will befall the poster.

Give a million dollars to someone on the verge of bankruptcy and they'll most likely be 2 million in debt next year.

There's usually a reason (or personality trait) that someone's on the verge of bankruptcy...

Gifts are seldom what people who merely have "bad luck" need.

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Adding video to channels (70s) - requested by Trancecoach.

I won't respond to your comments directly, mostly because they're mind-numbingly stupid, but I do have a question.

If normal zombies seek out brains, what is it you Fox News zombies are after? I mean, clearly it's not brains, you do your damnest to avoid the things.

Hmm, I said I wouldn't do this... You know what the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US is, don't you? Look it up. I don't think "personality" (is that code for "coloured" perchance?) makes the top 10.

Ford was fined $2.5m compensation in the courts and $3.5m in punitive damages. They were forced to initiate a recall or repair program. They suffered significant reputational damage.

I would argue history has borne out Friedman's fundamental point that the courts are sufficient to deal with this issue.

The problem is this is wishful thinking.

Unless you're a shareholder, you don't get a vote on how corporate funds are spent. There isn't an opportunity cost argument here unless you believe in state ownership or heavy intervention far beyond the level of regulation we have now.

Of course the government should incentive net benefits to society, say through subsidies or tax benefits, that the market undervalues such as health or transportation which has externality benefits that capitalism doesn't capture effectively. But that's a far cry from indicating specifically where it should be spent.

Why am I reminded of the Chewbacca defense, when I hear Friedman trying to talk his ass out of this?
It only felt for some people like he is "winning" because Moore is very insecure and as I would have been, was overwhelmed by such unbelievable audacity and stupidity.

Friedman is saying precisely nothing about your tangent on wealth disparity. What is more, he makes that clear too. He insists that the individual should have the freedom to save $5 or $100 or $5000 by buying a car with less safety features. He makes the additional comment that he fully supports government interference to ensure the consumer has access to the information required to make that an informed decision.

Friedmen's counter point is simple and clear, that Moore's main criticism is the price to safety choice Ford made with the Pinto. Friedmen points out that is not arguing on principle, but over price instead. He states a principled question would be more like how informed should the consumer be when paying for a Pinto.

Moore just comes off as childish in refusing to hear or understand the point, most likely because it injects grey into his black and white preexisting view.

@bcglorf

Seriously? He says, flat out, that a car shouldn't be so safely engineered that a million people have to starve so one person can afford it.

Pure hyperbole, especially when he knows full well the profits won't go to starving people.

And I won't respond to your ad hominem attack while your dad's dick is stuck in your mouth.

I'm patient. Take your time.

Considering you didn't even address the substance of my initial argument, but dragged things off on an irrelevant tangent, I'd say it's your loss.

But you can go ahead and spin it any way you want. That's what you do, right?

...and as for the ONLY cause for bankruptcy anywhere is the inability to pay for one's debts. The white, pimple-faced burger joint fry cook driving the Hummer wouldn't ultimately benefit from a $1,000,000 gift. He'd probably go buy a $750,000 house and wonder why he's bankrupt on land taxes. The banker who lost everything making margin calls on insider trading wouldn't have that million either. The family with the child suffering from cancer might benefit, but if they bought insurance rather than continuing to smoke 3 packs a day they wouldn't need it to begin with.

I'm saying people mostly go bankrupt because of their own stupid decisions. Very few are due to outside conditions. Gifting them money is just throwing gas on the fire.

"Give a man a fish" yadda yadda yadda.

Drachen, I'll help out although I'm pretty sure Payback won't understand. It will be fun to see what comes back...

A study done at Harvard University indicates that this is the biggest cause of bankruptcy, representing 62% of all personal bankruptcies. One of the interesting caveats of this study shows that 78% of filers had some form of health insurance, thus bucking the myth that medical bills affect only the uninsured.

And you know full well that starving people aren't buyers in the auto market and so probably don't much care how much they cost or how safe they were.

I repeat, wealthy distribution is a different subject. The point friedmen makes is that government should ensure buyers are informed when buying a cheaper but more dangerous product, and that gov should not decide for consumers what cost is too high for added safety.

Actually, the concept is simple and I completely agree with you.

I just don't like being told I'm an idiot by some pompous, snot-nosed asswipe for having the UNMITIGATED GALL of disagreeing with them.

This is Videosift, not Reddit... and I don't go anywhere near Reddit for just that reason.

Honestly, I usually just flip the bird at the screen when the verbal diarrhea starts and go find a cat video to upvote. Drachen just caught me on a bad day. Be nice if I could delete it all, but then again, I'm not afraid of what I say being on record, even when I'm wrong.

Friedman was an extremely smart man in absolute mastery of his area of expertise. Seeing Moore try to take him on at his own game reminded me of my uni days.

Great sift.

I don't understand what bankruptcy has to do with this at all.

It's not free or publicly owned money.

It's money held privately by the owners of the corporation.

You either accept that this whole line of argument is a red herring or you accept that you're in favour of expropriation.

The point of hyperbole is to show how arbitrary his argument is.

SVUs are safer than compacts. Should there be mandates on the size of cars as well? Where do you draw the line?

Maybe you let consumers decide, and give them recourse to courts in cases like these where they are uninformed about an egregious safety flaw.

Which is exactly what happened.

No doubt, Milton Friedman was a genius. With his brilliant command of Neo-Liberal policies his "Chicago Boys" basically destroyed Chile. There's a reason why places that are under American control are set way further back than countries in the same region with about the same resources. Milton Friedman has many great ideas that have been used to destroy countries, knowingly to enrich those who invested in the country and not the people of that country who should actually benefit from it's resources.

Anyone want to read something enlightening about Friedman's ideas and policies and the mark they've left on the world can check out "The Shock Doctrine". It's an excellent book by Naomi Klein.

What's the weather like, in that fantasy land inside your head?

Now see, this is exactly what should have come out of this offering for anyone regardless of their perception or opinion of the exploding-car routine.The lopsided exchange from the young buck to the tenured fuck, like watching a verbal slap-fight. Twas the first enjoyable impression and the only lasting value of this clip.

But that's just not true.

Firstly I'm not defending either US sponsored coup to install Pinochet or his repression. Purely the economic policies.

The fact is, Chile has the highest GDP per capita, the highest literacy rate and the highest Human Development Index of all major South American countries. It's also the least corrupt.

http://tinyurl.com/lf22scc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/

Admittedly most of the growth came about in the past 2 decades after Pinochet, but an honest reading of history shows that most of the groundwork was laid while he was in power.I don't take any comfort in attributing economic success to a mass murderer but those are the facts.

Frankly, while I agree with Naomi Klein on a number of things, she is absolutely clueless when it comes to economic policy. You can argue on certain specific policy choices (say restricting labour unions) or on the speed of reforms (which was also a major problem in Russia), but taken as a whole, you can't argue with the results.

Michael Moore put HIM in his place, as a child standing against a man... bizarre video title - the exact opposite is happening in the video!

@RedSky
that is not entirely accurate to state that it was friedmans economic policies that gave rise to chile.

i will agree to an extant that the original groundwork could be attributed to friedman and his economic plans but those plans were not all sunshine and rainbows.it was the chilean government who began to enact and implement solid policies to turn that state around after pinochet.dismantling much of what friedman had started.i.e: private pensions,schools,water etc etc.

and @Yogi does have a point.friedman is quoted often as saying that in times of crisis,it is a perfect opportunity to exploit that crisis in order to implement a policy that otherwise would have been rejected.

now we can argue just how responsible friedmen is in regards to a government who uses/abuses this tactic,but it does not change that fact that friedman was the author of "shock doctrine".

just as in this video,and one of those rare times i agree with friedman.the information should be public and governments only role in business should be that of "fraud police".it comes down to who is responsible.

which brings me to my final point.
economists are the charlatan snake oil salesmen.they consistently get it wrong,almost always.

economies are creations by and for people.
the human element seems to confound these intellectuals.
what plays out brilliantly on paper almost never does in real life..or at least for any protracted period of time.

which is also why i find friedman to be an insufferable cunt.
if there ever was a spark of humanity in that man,i have yet to see it.

Not that I come here much for the discussion these days, but describing all economists as charlatan snake oil salesmen, followed by describing Friedman is an 'insufferable cunt', does not exactly fan the flames of reasoned debate.

@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

Fair enough and I apologize for being snarky towards you in my comment. You were coming across like my brother-in-law who can be insufferable at times.