Milton Friedman's 'Free to Choose' Proved Capitalism Is Superior to Socialism

Forty years later, the libertarian Nobel laureate's PBS series is still winning hearts and minds. Source: ReasonTV YouTube channel.

Transcript:

The operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiency but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.

Forty years ago, PBS of all networks gave the libertarian economist Milton Friedman hours in prime time for Free to Choose, an unapologetic take on why capitalism was morally and pragmatically superior to socialism. Over the course of 10 one hour long episodes, the Nobel prize winner laid out the pitfalls of protectionism: “As consumers buying in an international market the more unfair the competition the better”, espouse the virtues of school choice: “How do you explain the fact that there is no area of the free market, no area of the private market in which the poor people who live in the ghettos of our major cities are as disadvantaged as they are with respect to the kind of schooling they can get”, and explained why spending, not taxes, was the real measure of the burden that governments put on their citizens: “If congress spends 50 billion dollars more than it takes in government spends 50 billion who do you suppose pays that 50 billion, of course the Arab sheikhs aren't paying it, Santa Claus isn't paying it, the tooth fairy isn't paying it.”

In an era long before the web and YouTube democratized discourse, Friedman showcased an assortment of radical thinkers such as economist Walter Williams: “The minimum wage law has the effects of saying that if you cannot produce $2.90 worth of goods an hour you don't deserve a job”, and Thomas Sowell: “To ascribe any status to any group of people: equality, inferiority, superiority, must necessarily reduce freedom”, and he subjected leading left-wing intellectuals like democratic socialist Michael Harrington, teachers union leader Albert Schenker, and political scientist Francis Fox Pivens to withering criticism of their ideas. You've got to compare something with something. Would you tell me the alternative which has improved a lot of the ordinary people? What is the system which in your mind has been successful? Most people through most history have lived in tyranny and misery. It's only a very tiny minority at any time that have been able to escape from it.

Free to Choose has been translated into two dozen languages and a companion book co-authored by Milton and his wife Rose was a New York Times bestseller and a book of the month club selection. The series was a response to The Age of Uncertainty, a 1977 PBS series hosted by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a former ambassador to India who was a leading spokesman for big government liberalism. Age of uncertainty was an attempt to begin to use storytelling as a way to reach people, but it was a dismal failure because Galbraith was terrible. The TV series just disappeared, but it's not like Free to Choose, which is just everywhere forty years later. The visionary producer behind free to choose was Robert Chitester, a hardcore free marketer who ran the PBS affiliated at Erie Pennsylvania, and wanted to bring libertarian ideas to mainstream audiences. Back then, he says, programs about capitalism and free enterprise were almost always relentlessly hostile.

They were really muck breaking attacks on what was perceived to be abusive or unsympathetic free market capitalism, where profit was all that mattered. In contrast Free to Choose talked about capitalism in upbeat positive terms, stressing how it helped individuals rather than exploited them, and how it brought about cooperation in a way that benefited the poor most of all. One of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over. And the two together form a coalition against the ordinary worker and the ordinary consumer.

Chitester says that while the topic of each episode was sketched out ahead of time, Friedman's comments were unrehearsed and improvised. His favorite quote of the entire series comes in episode 5 when Friedman drew a distinction between equal opportunities and equal outcomes.

If you promote freedom, if you remove arbitrary obstacles, you open the way for people to use their resources, you will end up, in my opinion, and I think the empirical evidence is overwhelmingly on this side, you will end up with both more freedom, more prosperity, and more equality.

But did Friedman make any mistakes in Free to Choose. His celebration of the free market miracle in Hong Kong is poignant to watch at the moment that that city's freedoms are under siege. And before his death, Friedman came to question his famous axiom that economic freedom in autocracy such as China

would give rise inevitably to political and cultural freedom.

Milton in a discussion close to near the end of his life indicated to me, he said Bob but I made a mistake, I was wrong. You have to have the fourth element. You have to have rule of law. You have to have law that applies equally to everyone. And clearly that's what you see not happening in China.

At 83 and ailing from a long bout with cancer, Chitester is himself contemplating his own mortality and how American society has changed since free to choose aired 40 years ago. He's proud that the program remains popular online, but, like Friedman, feels its analysis is somewhat incomplete.

Power is really something we have to factor into our thinking. The desire of humans to tell other humans what to do. You couple that with equality and boy you've got a recipe for constant problems in defending a classical liberal society.

Forty years later, Free to Choose, the program bob Chitester created with Milton and Rose Friedman

remains a powerful source for optimism and hope about freedom and the future.

Our freedom is in jeopardy, but it by no means has been completely destroyed. And I believe that there is a strong enough component of freedom in our society that we will be able to preserve it, that

we're going to turn this trend back, we are going to cut government down to size, we're going to lay the groundwork for a resurgence of that diversity which has been the real product of our free society.