The problem with many academics like Friedman is that they are technocratic ideologues that function well in their little utopistic vacuums, but when they interact in the real world they rarely are able to correct their belief systems. It’s always reality that gets in the way never their egos.
Here’s something to think about for all you who have difficulty correcting yourselves.
Socrates taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin once
they start to question and analyze every belief that they ever held dear. If
a certain belief passes the tests of evidence, deduction, and logic, it
should be kept. If it doesn’t, the belief should not only be discarded, but
the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the erroneous.

But I will not hold my breath, as taking on the establishment is biting the hand that feeds, and starvation is a nasty end.

However, I must make the same accusation toward anyone who proposes the idea of a government “not owned by powerful players in the private sector.”

Once the State comes into existence, which I am convinced is inevitable whenever human beings associate in groups larger than one, then the government the State institutes will ALWAYS be controlled by powerful players in the private sector.

In practice, not theory, it can be no other way.

This is a perfectly rational explanation for why there has never been a successful anarchist society numbering more than a few individuals, as so many detractors of anarchism are fond of pointing out.

A better analogy would have been Gandhi being responsible for the chaos of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947/48, wherein millions of Hindus and Muslims killed each other in their massive migrations in the ethnic cleansing. That’s a tough one to lay at Gandhi’s feet, but actions do have consequences, and Gandhi’s entire life centered around that accomplishment.

Libertarians who try to bring a radical philosophy to the establishment are, as I wrote, tragically naive at best and criminally complicit at worst.

Government is the problem not the solution.

For any variety of libertarianism to take hold in the world, it must begin at the grass-roots level. Going straight to the top will always result in co-option and perversion by the establishment. Milton Friedman (and any other economist) should have known that.

The deck is stacked tremendously against libertarianism (of all stripes) due to insurmountable opportunity costs and counterforces such as government school indoctrination, control of the economy and control of the political process.

Only rational individuals choosing to abandon the State will change human society. I am not hopeful.

You do understand the difference between scholarly study of monetary theory and endorsing the concept of central banking, don’t you?

Yes. And you do understand that that interview you link to is at least a decade after the Volcker Fed tried Friedman’s monetarist central banking theories and had to abandon them. I also note he doesn’t mention his own failed theories and the policy consequences for real people that followed from them in that interview. I guess it’s a lot easier to throw out the managerial state once you’ve tried to engineer the economy and failed.

But this really gets to the heart of the conflict you and I keep experiencing – this is always the problem with libertarians who try to bring a radical philosophy to the establishment. They want it both ways: they want to work within a system, formulate policy for it, gain notoriety within the context of it, become “experts” on it, but wash their hands when it doesn’t work out exactly as they plan and say “told ya so!”. There’s a certain duplicity to their position that radical libertarians often point out, and radicals on the more state socialist side will exploit.

Friedman, like a lot of people, said a lot of stuff over his life, a lot of it pretty technical. Some of it didn’t contradict other things he said or did. Some of it did. It’s disappointing Klein doesn’t adopt a more nuanced approach on all the effects of the work he did over the course of his life – let’s agree on that. But you’re not really being fair to her, either – Friedman was not the outsider maverick you paint him as.

BTW, I really recommend William Greider’s “Secrets of the Temple” for a surprisingly nuanced and interesting look at the full effects of Friedman’s monetarist policies and the role of the Reagan administration in implementing them.

Answer: She “doesn’t do nuance,” is unable to admit her many mistakes, takes it easy on authoritarians who share some of her views, and lives in a completely black and white world (everything can be blamed on “terroism/Islamofascism vs. everything can be blamed on free market economics)

In psychology I think the phenomenon at work is referred to as “projection,” but I could be wrong.

It just so happens that Naomi spelled backwards is I moan. So they’d have that going for them in that just world.

I can think of many worse candidates for ‘slathering hero worship’.

You wrote:

Anybody ever notice that Friedman’s ideas dealt largely with central motherfucking banking?

..and

I have great respect for the Austrian tradition, but how can you support a man who’s greatest contribution to economic theory was monetarism – the expert management of central banking is somehow libertarian now?

You do understand the difference between scholarly study of monetary theory and endorsing the concept of central banking, don’t you?

Friedman was highly critical of the federal reserve, and of central banks in general. He advocated for their abolition.

Are you going to adopt the Klein position that because Friedman studied central banking, he is somehow responsible for all the harm done by central banking?

Does that mean that because I write about the drug war, I’m also responsible for all the harm it causes?

Do you realize the absurdity of what you’re saying?

Pretty much any element of any ideology is going to predate the ideology in some form or another. I can think of a couple possible standards for whether or not a specific policy can be labeled with a specific ideology, and I can see how perhaps you wouldn’t call public schools “Marxist” because their establishment wasn’t primarily brought about by the influence of Marxist ideas (it was mainly the Prussian Model mixed with a healthy dose of xenophobia).

What Radley’s talking about here, however, falls outside of any possible reasonable standard. Klein is calling policies and governments “Friedmanite” *even though Friedman was openly opposed to them*, on the mere basis that they’re vaguely on the right-wing of that ill-defined duality political spectrum, and in her opinion so was Friedman. At best she has the fact that Friedman advised those governments on something completely unrelated.

“I have great respect for the Austrian tradition, but how can you support a man who’s greatest contribution to economic theory was monetarism – the expert management of central banking is somehow libertarian now?”

The man’s dead, so I don’t “support” him. I agree, Milton Friedman was wrong about central banking. That doesn’t mean I can’t admire and appreciate all the work he did on other issues, on the vast majority of which he took a libertarian stance. His work on the draft alone is enough to put him in the “net positive for liberty” column. Heck, even his monetarist theories, while certainly fundamentally flawed in their defense of central banking, were a big improvement over the dominant Keynesian policies they challenged.

Ron Paul takes what I think is a completely anti-libertarian position on immigration. Murray Rothbard was wrong about pandering to paleocons and conspiracy theorists. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.

No one is perfect. You’re never going to agree with any one on everything. Such judgments should be made by viewing the whole of the person and their ideas. When you’re talking about an advocate of ideas, support and opposition is not strictly an either/or proposition.

“Honestly, my only feeling here is that libertarians need to grow thicker skin if they want to compete on the ideological market”

I’m not quite sure what that means. It’s not like Balko was just whining and crying ’cause mean ol’ Naomi hurt his feelings. He wrote about his disagreement with Klein and explained how he felt about it and why. That *is* the marketplace of ideas.

“And that you throw out Klein’s perspective gets rid of a whole lot of libertarian baby to eliminate bathwater that is easily dealt with on a piecemeal basis”

I can’t even fathom how you can rail against Friedman for not being ideologically pure enough and then turn around and say something like that about an avowed anti-libertarian like Naomi Klein.

Friedman was among the most serious heavyweight intellectuals of the 20th century, whose ideas span astonishingly wide range of issues. It is no surprise that some of his ideas were used for bad reasons, or that some of the people he met with turned out to be evil.

Klein’s analogy would have us believe that Einstein was a war-monger because his work on physics lead to the atomic bomb, or that Ghandi, by catalyzing Indian independence, was responsible for 9-11.

I have great respect for the Austrian tradition, but how can you support a man who’s greatest contribution to economic theory was monetarism – the expert management of central banking is somehow libertarian now?

Honestly, my only feeling here is that libertarians need to grow thicker skin if they want to compete on the ideological market. And that you throw out Klein’s perspective gets rid of a whole lot of libertarian baby to eliminate bathwater that is easily dealt with on a piecemeal basis.