Rest in Peace, Mr. Friedman

[Publius]

On November 16th, Milton Friedman passed away due to heart failure. He is easily my favorite economist and my beliefs are built almost entirely upon his (though there are a couple of areas in which I disagreed with him).

Originally Posted by YoungCitizen.com

The summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school I took the required economics course in order to get what I considered a boring subject out of the way as quickly as possible. I slept through about 75% of the class, yet thanks to the apathy of the football-coach-turned-teacher still carried an A out of the course.

Looking back, I wish that I had spent more time paying attention in class rather than catching up on my sleep, because it could have saved me an entire year of time wasted in college before I realized economics was the route I wanted to go. Once I had discovered that the “dismal science” was the most interesting thing in the world to me, it followed very quickly that I began reading voraciously from the acknowledged living master of that science, Milton Friedman.

With Mr. Friedman’s passing last week (November 16th, to be exact), the world loses a man that in my estimation made more of a difference in the field of economic theory than anyone in history save for possibly the father of modern economics himself, Adam Smith. As the founder of the Monetarist school of thought and a Nobel Prize winner, Milton Friedman was considered by many to be the primary intellectual impetus behind the collapse of the communist system in Soviet Russia.

Friedman was strictly and fervently dedicated to the advancement of laissez-faire economics, supporting the reduction of barriers to trade and free enterprise across the world. His political views, tied so closely with his economic theories as to be almost indistinguishable, shaped the libertarian movement and the beliefs and policies of fiscal conservatives such as Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps the efforts of Friedman and several of the PhD students from his program at the University of Chicago serve as the most controversial, yet most amazing, example of Friedman’s policy beliefs. Advising Augusto Pinochet, military dictator of Chile for several years, the “Chicago Boys” managed to form a free market system under the dictator. While criticized for working with Pinochet, Friedman was quick to point out for the remainder of his life that the freeing up of the economy in Chile both softened Pinochet’s reign and led ultimately to the dissolution of his government and its replacement with a democratically elected regime in 1990.

Mr. Friedman was, in this author’s opinion, the greatest economic theorist in the 20th century. He will be missed dearly, but his theories shall live on as long as free markets exist.

RIP, Mr. Friedman

[6SpeedTA95]

He was awesome, I just ordered one of his books on amazon last sunday

[kinggovernor]

certainly the greatest economist in the 20th century

[Publius]

Why did none of you tell me he passed away while I was on vacation? I had to read about it in Cato@Liberty

[Diamond Cross]

Isn't he the one the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is based on?

[Publius]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

Isn't he the one the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is based on?

No.

[lew]

Originally Posted by Publius

Why did none of you tell me he passed away while I was on vacation? I had to read about it in Cato@Liberty

Milton Friedman has passed away

[lew]

He was great, but I like his son better.

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

Isn't he the one the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is based on?

that was John Nash, Friedman never was crazy

[RMNIXON]

From William F. Buckley today:

"It isn't right to rail against fortune when death comes to a friend, or a hero -- in this case, both -- at the high age of 94. Still, we are free to choose, and there was grief when word came to us of the death of Milton Friedman. We were on board a large ship, where a week of seminars at sea was being guided by a dozen celebrants of conservative doctrine. One was to have been Friedman himself, but when the boat pulled away from San Diego, bound for Mexico, Friedman was in a hospital in San Francisco.

What struck the band of brothers who came together last Friday afternoon to devise an impromptu tribute to our missing seminarist was in fact exactly that -- grief, never mind that he had lived 94 years. Although Professor Friedman engaged himself to the end, in tandem with his brilliant wife, Rose, in academic and philosophical work, it was not the discontinuation of this that caused the pang aboard the S.S. Oosterdam. If the word had come that Friedman would never again write an academic paper, or a book or column, we'd have tightened our belts, and perhaps reminded ourselves of the million words that are there in print, and will always be there, to reread and to ponder. But what we felt was not so much the discontinuation of that great wellspring of liberal and penetrating thought. It was grief for the loss of a person.

It is inevitably so that the end of life of a central intellectual or political or indeed theatrical figure can be felt personally only by a comparative few, because only a few can have known any historical figure. The legion of admirers at a remove -- those who felt for him, without ever having met him, admiration, devotion, even love -- is something different, more detached. But there was also the impact of his person on individual students and friends and coadjutors, and on Thursday, Nov. 16, we felt a wholly personal loss."

[Ardentfrost]

Yeah pub, you kinda missed the thread I guess.

Here's a video from a long time ago.

Milton Friedman on Limited Government - Google Video

[Publius]

Originally Posted by lew

Milton Friedman has passed away

i was in belize the day he died, not a lot of breaking news got to me down there