The Friedman Inventions

In a persuasive tract, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), Milton and Rose Friedman propound an economic system that does not exist, never has existed, and is unlikely ever to exist except in the fantasies of authors who perceive its present reality in Hong Kong, its past in the golden age between Waterloo and World War I, and its future in a world conforming to the Friedman formula. The formula is an economy that runs itself without governmental intervention in a society that separates politics from economics. Such a social order will not only bring greater material gains but also the underpinnings for lasting democracy and peace—they say.

The diagram of this laissez-faire Elysium is drawn so cleverly tha...