Milton Friedman: Hip to Be Square

Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who died yesterday, defied the popular but incorrect image of your average drug policy reformer. He was never seen in a tie-dye shirt, and he'd most likely never heard of Cheech and Chong. Friedman, truth be told, was a bit of a square.

If only there were more squares like him.

I skimmed eight or ten news articles and commemorative pieces about Friedman in the past hour, and was struck by how incidental most of these reports make his tireless defense of personal liberty seem. His opposition to the drug war and to prostitution laws, when it's mentioned at all, is treated as a personal quirk, not as a principle that flowed from the same core beliefs that shaped his thinking on economics.

Friedman was an adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and greatly influenced Margaret Thatcher (icons of squaredom, all). To be sure, for all his sway over those leaders' economic policies, Friedman utterly failed to convince them that drug prohibition produces nothing but colossal social and financial failure. But it's also a reality that, to use some time-tested lefty jargon, he fearlessly spoke truth to power, never bending or obfuscating his views on personal freedom just to avoid giving offense to his political masters.

Here, from early 1998, is a brilliant little snippet of insight, characteristic of his fertile mind. Writing in the New York Times, Friedman pointed out that

Informers are not needed in crimes like robbery and murder because the victims of those crimes have a strong incentive to report the crime. In the drug trade, the crime consists of a transaction between a willing buyer and willing seller. Neither has any incentive to report a violation of law. On the contrary, it is in the self-interest of both that the crime not be reported. That is why informers are needed. The use of informers and the immense sums of money at stake inevitably generate corruption — as they did during Prohibition. They also lead to violations of the civil rights of innocent people, to the shameful practices of forcible entry and forfeiture of property without due process.

Thanks for everything, Milton. You'll be missed.

Comments

[The Wine Commonsewer]

well said

[Martin Owens]

it's like they say....

you don't know what you got 'till it's gone....