An enduring legacy

The Economist has an excellent obituary for Milton Friedman. The finest I've read thusfar.

An enduring legacy

It is amazing to me how one person can be so productive when so many people accomplish so little in their lifetimes.

The negative income tax (otherwise known as the earned income tax credit), a volunteer army, a commitment to free markets and central banks directing economic activity rather than government, public and private school choice and vouchers, proposing the idea of natural unemployment.

And that is not even to mention the powerful legacy of a promoting freedom, his ability to explain the powerful role that freedom plays in stronger, more responsible choices and understandings of the world, and his living legacy to that idea.

Milton Friedman accomplished more in one lifetime than most people ever imagine for themselves.

His ideas were powerful and animated by a commitment to freedom that has already done so much good for the world and will likely, hopefully, do still much good after his death.

When I say that I don't agree with everything that Milton Friedman has said or argued or thought or believed, I say it as someone who has never and will never agree with everything that anyone ever says. Milton's vision of the power of free peoples and markets to care for so many important social issues -- health, safety, the environment, poverty and wealth inequities, concerns around race, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, gender, and so many other social issues -- was more limited than free people or free markets were capable of. And his failure of imagination on these issues will rationalize the very kinds of regulation of those markets that Milton so powerfully argued against unless free peoples take advantage of their freedom more responsibly to care for those issues. The failure of those regulations will neither be enough nor are they likely to deter the more ideologically-committed of their advocates, no matter what failures they create or encounter. It will take positive commitments by those within the free world and within free markets to offer real rather than just hypothetical alternatives to regulation or government to attempt to resolve such issues. Issues that can only be resolved with the free commitments of free peoples, but which ideologues may never be satisfied with undermining no matter their failures.

Milton Friedman's most important legacy was his commitment to freedom and the commitment to free thinking that is humanity's only most serious hope for resolving all of its most serious problems.

And it is that legacy that ranks Milton Friedman as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. And one of the few thinkers whose ideas will live long after him into the 21st century and beyond.

Love,
Ben

Looking after number one

You know what's the ultimate self-centeredness that the majority of people in the world commit and that noone wants to take responsibility for:

They all want to be forgiven. But nobody wants to forgive.

It's the ultimate self-centeredness of humanity, as far as I'm concerned.

And the tragedy of it all is that we all do and will need forgiveness for our self-centeredness around forgiveness and all of the ways that our vision of the world is distorted by our self-centeredness.

You know why Democrats don't impress me in the least, these days?

The one way they try to distinguish themselves from Republicans is around wealth inequities.

And yet I very rarely hear from Democrats -- John Edwards and Barak Obama being two very rare exceptions and even their opining is kind of weak given the enormity of wealth inequities -- getting to the heart of wealth inequities. And the heart of wealth inequities is that we all take advantage of our neighbors and that we all need to stop. Rich people, middle class people, poor people. We all take advantage of our neighbor. And the only way we will stop, I'm convinced is to the degree that we stop voluntarily and to the degree to which we wisen up and don't let people take advantage of us to the greatest degree possible.

The sad fact of life is that the second option has limits in what it can do for us. And that, ultimately, when it comes to alleviating wealth inequities, the first option -- our willingness to voluntarily stop taking advantage of our neighbor -- is the only real hope we have on this issue.

And everything else -- the minimum wage, health care, family leave, education, etc. -- these issues are all just a function of our willingness to stop.

And until we do, this issue will remain on our individual and general consciences and our childrens' consciences and their childrens' consciences until we face it squarely.

The one really great thing about this period is that American hegemony -- liberal or conservative -- over the world is being seriously and permanently eroded, I think. America and people, generally, will either lead because they have better ideas for leadership, or they will lose their following. Force and power and wealth are not good enough reasons for leadership. And you can some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. And Democrats, like Republicans, will have to learn that lesson the hard way, it seems.

As long as we satisfy ourselves with the cyncism, a cynical reality will remain and all of the cyncical responses to the reality that have all gotten worse in the last 6 years will get worse. And the world will continue down that road until we wisen up and face the reality squarely.

The last 6 years have been one long self-congratulation by the left and by the right for all of their ugliest, meanest, most cynical, most thoughtless instincts.

And there is no real progress in that kind of self-congratulation.

Every ugly reality that has ever persisted in the world has been rationalized as the only possible reality by its cynical defenders or even cynical detractors. Slavery, oppression of women, oppression of minority ethnicities, religions, ideologies, and groups, imperialism, repressive government, poverty and wealth inequities.

Every single ugly reality in the world that exists or has existed has tried to suck new life from the cynical rationalization that the world could be and would be no other way.

And the only thing that has ever made those cynical realities go away is peoples' willingness to face them squarely and criticize them until they were resolved; not until the consciences of those who perpetuate them are appeased.

Forgiveness is the only context in which that can be done effectively. And it is the path that can facilitate it most quickly and successfully. There isn't enough prosecution in the world to make this issue or any issue go away. Conscience is what we must engage. And no other path will resolve this or any other issue. Every other path is temporary and minimal in scope.

And anyone who thinks differently around that fundamental issue, as far as I'm concerned, is just not being honest with themselves or others.

Here's to a world where we all take more serriously getting honest with ourselves.

Love,
Ben