Milton Friedman died today at the age of 94. Ben Bernanke, former Chair of Princeton’s Economics Department, once remarked, “The worst pitfall in reading Friedman today is to fail to appreciate the originality and even revolutionary character of his ideas in relation to the dominant views at the time.” Before Friedman, Lord John Maynard Keynes’ collectivist notions were considered not just a compelling economic argument, but the only economic argument; Friedman challenged the supremacy of Keynes’ ideas and shattered the collectivist consensus. Freidman’s ideas regarding political and economic freedom have become the dominant force, the ruling paradigm, in public policy. Friedman reframed the debate in terms of economic and political freedom, revamping the nation’s presuppositions regarding public policy and forming a new framework within which economic problems are discussed and solved prompting William F. Buckley, Jr. to call him simply "my hero."
Friedman’s many accomplishments include reviving the monetarist theory of money supply, predicting the “stagflation” of the 1970s, and creating the Chicago School of economics, based at the University of Chicago, where he taught. In 1976, on the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Since then, twelve members of the economics school at the University of Chicago have followed in his footsteps and been awarded the same honor.
An intellectual of the highest order, he shunned the sometimes totalitarian mindset of the American academy, professing a loyalty to tolerance and freedom. In his seminal work Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman argued that economic freedom and political freedom were inseparable. A champion of limited government, Friedman was a staunch supporter of FIRE, remarking:
Over the course of a long lifetime, I have witnessed a serious decline in tolerance and respect for freedom of speech in the academy. FIRE is currently the most effective force countering that trend. It deserves the support of every believer in a free society.
Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity at the core of FIRE’s mission—are safer today because of the work of Milton Friedman. John Maynard Keynes famously said that we are unconsciously ruled by dead economists. If so, we can consider ourselves lucky as long as Milton Friedman’s ideas rule us.
(A similar tribute appears on FIRE's Torch about him.
