TFA is a lengthy slog, but it seemed to be mostly worth it. If nothing else, TFA ties together a lot of the business folk wisdom with its origins, repeatedly pointing out that this one is based on the thoughts of a blatant racist, this other one used as the basis for RTO came from someone talking about factory workers, not office workers, etc.
Except Friedman wasn't a racist, and the quote is cut specifically to make it appear that way. In the very same chapter Friedman argues that discrimination based on skin color is irrational and wrong. Edward Zitron is lying in his framing.
In the same chapter Friedman literally says:
> On the contrary, I believe strongly that the color of a man's skin or the religion of his parents is, by itself, no reason to treat him differently; that a man should be judged by what he is and what he does and not by these external characteristics. I deplore what seem to me the prejudice and narrowness of outlook of those whose tastes differ from mine in this respect and I think the less of them for it.
> Except Friedman wasn't a racist, and the quote is cut specifically to make it appear that way.
He doesn't say that Friedman was racist, you made that up.
He says that Friedman was a fundamentalist and that people should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, and the quote illustrates that well and the context doesn't change anything to that point.
I'm saying he clipped the quote to give that impression.
> He says that Friedman was a fundamentalist and that people should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, and the quote illustrates that well and the context doesn't change anything to that point.
No, Firedman says that government force isn't the best way to address discrimination. Again the quote is clipped to mislead.
Page 93 (as numbered on the pages, IDK which PDF "page" [edit: nb the table of contents gets it wrong, one supposes the pages were re-numbered in the digitization process, or something]) or just search "Capitalism and Discrimination" and it'll get you there fast, for anyone who's interested. The chapter is... well, I found a real howler, but then I have odd taste in entertainment, sometimes, and my enjoyment was almost certainly not by a route the author intended. I'd recommend it just on that basis, regardless of its role in this thread but, uh, only for my fellow weirdos.
I figured you had, and posted it for others. Should have made that clearer.
FWIW I didn't find Zitron's framing of it misleading, having now read it (I'd read excerpts of that book before, and maybe even that chapter, but couldn't recall for sure, so re-read it just now)
My point is the author did not say Friedman was racist, you invented that the author said that. Address that, instead of talking about what Friedman say.
I’m saying the author frames it that way, and other people here clearly drew that conclusion. The author also took out some of context the clip from the 1970 article.
He was making an argument that owners should be allowed to discriminate against black people.
Prefacing that with "I am personally against discrimination" is pretty much meaningless. His awful economic doctrine and beliefs will result in discrimination anyway.
Let's not pretend Friedman needs to be presented in a bad light to make it clear he was an awfully evil person.
If you read the whole chapter it’s clear that he’s not saying that. He’s arguing the government shouldn’t legislate against negative harm. He’s using this for framing.
I absolutely think it’s ridiculous to call him an evil person, it’s a totally unfair characterization.
> If you read the whole chapter it’s clear that he’s not saying that. He’s arguing the government shouldn’t legislate against negative harm. He’s using this for framing.
He is arguing against the only thing that could meaningfully reduce discrimination and increase equality. As I refuse to believe Friedman was an imbecile, the only possibility left is malice. He knows that his free market fundamentalism will result in more discrimination, but he doesn't care because government is icky.
> I absolutely think it’s ridiculous to call him an evil person, it’s a totally unfair characterization.
He was evil because he advocated for policies and doctrines that meaningfully make the lives of people worse. It's likely impossible to measure the harm he caused to the world.
I think you’re plainly wrong. Segregation was an invention of the state. In northern states where it was not the law of the land people freely mixed or didn’t in some cases. People in New York in 1950 were no less racist, they just didn’t have legally mandated segregation.
Surely we can agree the freer market in New York was superior to the government control of contracts in North Carolina.
Free markets have demonstrably lifted billions of people out of abject poverty in the last 50 years.
> Segregation was an invention of the state. In northern states where it was not the law of the land people freely mixed or didn’t in some cases. People in New York in 1950 were no less racist, they just didn’t have legally mandated segregation.
you are choosing to define segregation very narrowly - as in a government law requiring individuals to be segregated (attend separate schools, or use separate bathrooms, etc)
that is an absurd definition to use in this context, because the original example from Friedman's quote is a different type of segregation - a business owner hanging out a sign that says "we're hiring, but only white people".
redlining [0] created segregated neighborhoods, but not via government mandate, just from banks and mortgage lenders "voluntarily" deciding that certain neighborhoods should be whites-only. there were also housing covenants [1, 2] that enforced segregation via contract law.
if your definition of segregation does not include those practices, your definition is worthless.
The original quote as I’ve said is taken out of context, the chapter is about freedom of contracts and does talk about legally mandated segregation. Friedman just says that further interference in contracts is in his opinion not the remedy.
The Federal Housing Authority created in 1933 and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation created in 1934 created the zones and directed the banks where to make loans. I’d suggest you read a bit either. I’d suggest The Color of Law.
> The Federal Housing Authority created in 1933 and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation created in 1934 created the zones and directed the banks where to make loans.
from the NYT article I linked to:
> In 1927, the National Association of Real Estate Boards — now the National Association of Realtors — championed racial covenants, creating a model clause that was inserted into countless deeds. It read, in part: “No part of said premises shall be sold, given, conveyed or leased to any negro or negroes.”
> The Federal Housing Administration, which was created in the 1930s to insure home mortgages, also all but required racial covenants to guarantee loans, including those for developments like Levittown, a community of mass-produced tract homes on Long Island that opened in the late 1940s and where only “members of the Caucasian race” were allowed to live.
there was legally-mandated segregation, but it was not exclusively done through legal mandates. some of it was "voluntary" contracts of the sort Friedman is defending.
your previous comment was that people in NY in 1950 didn't have legally mandated segregation. but apparently you are aware that there was segregation in NY in that time period?
maybe you're splitting microscopic hairs, and letting "in 1950" do some heavy lifting? because those covenants were enforceable in NY and elsewhere, but only up until Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948.
and of course, lots of other discrimination was legally allowed after that, up until the Fair Housing Act - for example, advertising apartment rentals in NYC as "whites-only" would have been perfectly legal until 1968 [0]. that's also a "voluntary" contract of the sort Friedman thinks the state shouldn't interfere with?
> I’d suggest you read a bit either. I’d suggest The Color of Law.
are you unaware of how condescending you come across with comments like this?
or are you aware, and are OK with it? (especially when "go read such-and-such" has been repeated in many of your comments throughout this thread)
it's quite possible for people to have read all the same books as you have, but come away with different opinions. responding to someone who disagrees with you with "go read this book" is kind of an asshole move. it carries a baked-in assumption that the person who disagrees with you isn't as well-informed as you are.
Yes, I told a bunch of people to read the chapter the quote was pulled from, when they clearly had not, but you are right I was a bit rude to you. I'm sorry.
I think we have a reasonable difference of opinion here, and while my focus is primarily on the force of law, you're right the the history of the racial covenants is important to consider.
This conversation is never going to get anywhere, because we have fundamentally irreconcilable views of the world.
In my view what lifted people from abject poverty was a measure of technological progress and industrialization. The places where people were mostly lifted out of poverty do not embrace the completely unregulated free market fantasy of Friedman.
I believe in government as a strong regulator to rein in corporations, because corporations are optimized to generate profits even when they cause harm to society in their profit-seeking mandate. Obviously you will disagree with this, because government icky, and you seem to embrace the fantasy that once free of the shackles of icky government, the benevolent capital holders will benefit the world somehow.
You advocate for something very extreme, and it is clear we won't find middle ground at this point.
Have a great evening, and feel free to have the last word.
It’s pretty clear that when governments open markets and relax market controls the population grows in wealth. Certainly, technology drives efficiency and grows the pie I wouldn’t argue otherwise. However the closed economies with price controls and lots of government intervention can’t easily make use of technological innovations. China started growing when private businesses were first allowed, for example. The Nordics took off after liberalizing their economies. You can look across South America and see that the most open economies have the highest standards of living.
I don’t disagree that governments have a role in regulating harms, and neither did Friedman. He did believe that taxing pollution was more effective than setting particular targets, but that’s a difference of approach not of aims.
I think we probably have more overlap than you imagine.
It really isn't that at all, he argues that it's wrong to discriminate but that government interference in the freedom to make contracts isn't the best solution. He goes on to elaborate an make a case for how else it might be better addressed. The article intentionally misleads by clipping the quote out of context.
But it is.
This the the same argument against minimum wage. It's just wrong.
The government should absolutely set a floor on wages and discrimination.
There must be a standard to minimize friction. It's just not something that anyone can do by themselves.
Discrimination was the actually historical basis for the US introducing a minimum wage. There’s available testimony from congress that show that the intention was to push women, blacks, and immigrants out of the workforce.
I think it is totally within the bounds of reasonable discourse to discuss if minimum wage laws achieve their stated goals.
> pointing out that this one is based on the thoughts of a blatant racist
Actually this is a pretty weak point. We have plenty of historical examples where a terrible person came up with a brilliant idea. So Friedman being racist or not (he was categorically not, Zitron is being unfair here) is kind of a non-issue. The philosophical problem is that favoring shareholder value above moral value or social value (or whatever you want to call it: the betterment of society; or Socrates' "flourishing" [εὐδαιμονία]) just doesn't seem to have any positive externalities.
"Line go up," sure, but what does that actually do? "Line go up" teleology is trivially a dead end moral philosophy. In fact, if history is much of a teacher, any economic teleology seems to be pretty morally bankrupt—from concrete jungle capitalism to Bolshevik communism to bartering. I'm extrapolating, but here, I do agree with Ed.
He may not be racist racist, but he's most definitely an absolute piece of shit - Ed should maybe have focussed more on all his other shitty attributes.
If you were trying to plan for retirement; and had a specific number you were trying to hit, who are you going to give your money to?
The person who is good at consistently making the value/number go up and to the right on your money; or the one that gives vague ‘social good’ reasons why they aren’t?
Especially if the ‘social good’ stuff is often vague and non-concrete?
The world is a much different place from when Socrates was around.
> If you were trying to plan for retirement; and had a specific number you were trying to hit, who are you going to give your money to?
This has nothing to do with the broader point of drafting policies that further social flourishing (there's disagreements as to what this means, of course) as opposed to drafting policies that further "line go up." In fact, I'd argue that the latter is meaningless without a foundational underpinning (we see this in imploding hyper-inflated economies).
In other words, who cares if I have a zillion Funbucks if the country is falling apart?
Friedman is arguing that it isn't the job of professional manager to use other peoples' money to set social goals. He argues that society broadly should establish social norms and that government should regulate negative externalizes like pollution.
He was never saying just do what the fuck ever you can to flip a buck. The article quoted by Edward Zitron is Friedman responding to Nixon trying to shame companies into not raising prices during an inflationary period.
The issue here is that as an individual, you’re not actually going to decide fundamental policy matters.
At a certain scale, regardless of what you personally choose (unless most others in the country do exactly the same thing you do), the country is going to either ‘fall apart’ or not regardless. Think of it from an election perspective - no matter how hard you voted for anyone but Trump last election in the US, Trump still got elected.
But, you can choose if you’ll have more money or not at the end, depending on which company you choose to invest in. So for instance, regardless of how you voted, practically, it would have still been a good idea to invest in some of the companies which benefit from Trump being in office, eh?
Yes, this does lead to larger scale problems when everyone does the same math. But at the same time, the actual math is the same for everyone, eh?
Money may be the root of all evil, but how much you have also decides if you’re going to be eating cat food in retirement, or have gourmet home cooked meals eh?
Monks may sleep better at night, but that is a trade off few others are able to make.
