Honoring Milton Friedman

Today is Milton Friedman's 99th birthday. To commemorate him, I am sharing an interview excerpt and a quote. The excerpt is a quick overview of all the problems with the Drug War and why it is counter-productive.


The quote is from Capitalism and Freedom, and succintly captures why I myself am often sceptical of aggressive government intrusion:

Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action. At any moment in time, by imposing uniform standards in housing, or nutrition, or clothing, government could undoubtedly improve the level of living of many individuals; by imposing uniform standards in schooling, road construction, or sanitation, central government could undoubtedly improve the level of performance in many local areas and perhaps even on the average of all communities. But in the process, government would replace progress by stagnation, it would substitue uniform mediocrity for the variety essential for that experimentation which can bring tomorrow's laggards above today's mean.