Friedman is pretty much the kind of nimrod whose philosophy has lead us to this financial mess we see all around us today.

It never ceases to amaze me how so many conservatives will treat anything that he says as gospel and ignore the very proof all around us that he is dead wrong.

Absolute capitalism is a myth and no society or civilization would have ever evolved if the tenets of Friedman's capitalism were the only building blocks available.

>> ^rougy:
Friedman is pretty much the kind of nimrod...

Firstly, did he say anything in that video you disagreed with?

Secondly, I thought it was a combination of the Fed maintaining a too large money supply, and a war that forced them to raise the interest rates? More like the commissar in his office, than Friedman's capitalism.

But yeah, you're right, capitalism gets messy when mixed with politics. But aren't you barking up the wrong tree then?

You can take his philosophy too far, but I agree with what he says in this video. The fact is that you can't have a competitive free market without regulation to keep it fair. The art is making that regulation as light as necessary and not letting regulation stifle innovation.

Friedman seemed really good at explaining the benefits of capitalism in isolation like this video. BUT then he turns into an idiotic zealot when he tries to integrate that into a bigger picture, refusing consider the flaws and limitations of capitalism. He can't seem to consider anything but a binary choice of capitalism vs extreme communism.

Uh... here's how to make a pencil:
http://www.pencilpages.com/articles/make.htm

And now you know!

While I agree with his point about the invisible hand moving all these different sectors of our world together (without any central command), you could probably find someone fairly easily who could do all the requisite steps to make a pencil. But he's right, the magic of the price system is that instead of me wasting an hour to carve out 10 pencils, I can go down to the grocery store and buy a box of them for a buck.

if all we needed was pencils, i'd go along with his magical theory.

Everyone with a nobel prize in economics please stand up. Hey, where did everyone go?

The reason is it binary comunisim or capitalism his debates is because there is no logical seperation or distinction to talk about in the middle. Everything there is arbitray and subjective. You can't talk about kinda-capitalsm without using a set of very subjective and arbitray standards. In other conversation, he does talk about some regulations that he think should exist, but you can't form an agument based solely on the rules of exception. If the need for something arises, like monopoly busting, then his arguments deal with those in those cases, but he doesn't usually put those first on small videos like this. If you read some of his works, he addresses those areas you would seem to disparage him for.

Mixed economy ftw.

Pencils!
http://visualstreak.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/maestre-pencil-sculpture1.jpg

>> ^Crake:
>> ^rougy:
Friedman is pretty much the kind of nimrod...
Firstly, did he say anything in that video you disagreed with?

"Magic of the price system" did it for me. Reminds me of the "THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS" cartoon.

*kill

Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by submitter imstellar28.