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Milton Friedman On Libertarianism · Gil I Am

0:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today, Libertarianism.
0:10
Speaker 1: Our guest the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman. For
0:14
Speaker 1: millions of Americans, motorcycles represent freedom, rugged individualism, the pleasures
0:19
Speaker 1: of roaring along the open road while the wind streams
0:23
Speaker 1: streams through your hair, Well, it would stream through your
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Speaker 1: hair if you didn't have a helmet on. When he
0:29
Speaker 1: gets on his bike, every motorcyclist has a choice to make.
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Speaker 1: Wear the helmet and achieve greater safety, take the helmet
0:35
Speaker 1: off and have more fun.
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Speaker 2: Every motorcyclist has a choice to make.
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Speaker 1: That is, except in the more than twenty states, including
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Speaker 1: this state of California, that require the use.
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Speaker 2: Of a helmet by law.
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Speaker 1: And that's just the kind of issue we'll be talking
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Speaker 1: about with Milton Friedman today. As a libertarian, Doctor Friedman
0:51
Speaker 1: believes in the maximum possible freedom for the individual, yet
0:56
Speaker 1: he also recognizes the need for certain government functions. Functions
1:00
Speaker 1: How does he decide when it's legitimate for the government
1:03
Speaker 1: to take some of our freedom away? Doctor Friedman and
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Speaker 1: I won't be talking about motorcycle helmets, but we will
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Speaker 1: be discussing the larger issues of how a libertarian looks
1:12
Speaker 1: at public safety, protecting the environment, or deciding the right
1:16
Speaker 1: size of government itself. We begin by asking doctor Friedman,
1:21
Speaker 1: just what is a libertarian. The typical definition of libertarianism,
1:30
Speaker 1: in my mind, is that a libertarian wants the smallest,
1:34
Speaker 1: least intrusive government, consistent with.
1:38
Speaker 3: Existent with a maximum freedom for each individual to follow
1:42
Speaker 3: his own ways, his own values, as long as he
1:46
Speaker 3: doesn't interfere with anybody else is doing the same.
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Speaker 1: Okay, consistent with the maximum freedom of each individual, as
1:52
Speaker 1: long as he doesn't interfere with under other individuals pursuing
1:55
Speaker 1: their own freedom.
1:56
Speaker 3: But as a matter of fact, there are two really
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Speaker 3: different versions of libertarian The more extreme version of libertarianism
2:03
Speaker 3: has one central principle. It is immoral to initiate force
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Speaker 3: on anywhere else. That's the prime view, that's the prime
2:13
Speaker 3: that's the iron ran type libertarianism.
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Speaker 2: So the coercive power of the state is immoral.
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Speaker 3: Immoral in and of itself. And all you need to
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Speaker 3: know to know that something of the state is immoral
2:23
Speaker 3: is whether it involves the initiation of force. That's one brand.
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Speaker 3: Now there's another brand, which is one I would be
2:31
Speaker 3: favorable to, which you could call consequentialists libertarianism, and it's
2:36
Speaker 3: the one you've just defined.
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Speaker 2: Well, you've just defined it. But thank you all. Take
2:40
Speaker 2: the credit. I see the way you work with graduate students.
2:44
Speaker 1: Now, if I may, let me take you through a
2:47
Speaker 1: series of questions that are floating around in the modern
2:50
Speaker 1: mind and ask how a libertarian addresses them. Question number
2:55
Speaker 1: one the environment. Now, it would strike a lot of
2:59
Speaker 1: people in Manhattan that Central Park is very important to
3:03
Speaker 1: their lives, and that if Milton Friedman had his way,
3:06
Speaker 1: it would be turned over to the market and buried
3:09
Speaker 1: under skyscrapers and parking lots within eighteen months or however
3:13
Speaker 1: long it takes Donald Trump to put the structures up.
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Speaker 3: It doesn't take a governmental agency to maintain the theaters
3:20
Speaker 3: in New York. It doesn't take a government agency to
3:24
Speaker 3: maintain the museums, the art museums in New York. The
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Speaker 3: Museum of Modern Art is not a government museum. It's
3:31
Speaker 3: a private It happened to be there two kinds. They
3:34
Speaker 3: are a private for profit enterprises or not for profit
3:37
Speaker 3: enterprises like the museum, like the Opera House and so on.
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Speaker 3: In the same way, if Central Park were not owned
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Speaker 3: by the government, it never would have become the filthy
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Speaker 3: place it became. You forget what happened to Central Park.
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Speaker 3: We for years, for some years, were a long long
3:55
Speaker 3: time ago, lived on Central Park West, and we were
3:59
Speaker 3: in the York.
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Speaker 2: It's pretty good. During the war, even then, it was
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Speaker 2: a very good address.
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Speaker 3: It wasn't a bad address, but it wasn't particularly good,
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Speaker 3: all right. But we were able to take our children
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Speaker 3: down to the park and on their babies and let
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Speaker 3: them leaven with a teenage sitter, and nobody was worried
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Speaker 3: about safety. But in more recent years, until the very
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Speaker 3: recent years, Central Park came to be a place where
4:21
Speaker 3: you wouldn't dare to do that. It wasn't safe. That
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Speaker 3: was because it was a government park. The central principle
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Speaker 3: is that nobody takes care of somebody else's property as
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Speaker 3: well as he takes care of his own. If Central
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Speaker 3: Park were privately owned, it would be advantageous to provide
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Speaker 3: a recreational space.
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Speaker 1: Now you just touched on something very important, because one
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Speaker 1: of the things I'm trying to distinguish here is the
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Speaker 1: extent to which your libertarianism is effectively a moral position.
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Speaker 2: You do it because it's right and just.
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Speaker 1: It creates the greatest conditions of justice and the extent
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Speaker 1: to which you do it because it works, and it
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Speaker 1: sounds to me as though you have both reasons pretty
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Speaker 1: well wrapped up.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, if it didn't work, the main thing is, if
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Speaker 3: it didn't work, it would be an impossible goal. The
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Speaker 3: only reason there's any chance of keeping government limited is
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Speaker 3: because government is so inefficient and does so poorly.
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Speaker 2: Now, let me just try.
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Speaker 1: During the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century, government in
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Speaker 1: Britain was very limited and economic enterprise went all but unregulated.
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Speaker 2: Yet that wasn't exactly a golden age, now was it?
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Speaker 1: Again and again and again you'll hear we've tried. The
5:38
Speaker 1: Western world has already tried les a fair letter rip economics,
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Speaker 1: and it ended up with the London that Charles Dickens portrayed, dirty, filthy,
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Speaker 1: child labor, Just a terrible mess.
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Speaker 2: What do you do with what? How did that come
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Speaker 2: to be?
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Speaker 3: It was a terrible mess. But what cleaned it.
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Speaker 1: Up Israeliant is social the child labor laws and no, no.
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Speaker 3: What cleaned it up was the progress of private enterprise
6:07
Speaker 3: because you had a The reason it was so messy
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Speaker 3: was because you had to burn coal and the kind
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Speaker 3: of coal that was available in Britain was very smoky
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Speaker 3: and messy. And once you were able to use oil,
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Speaker 3: natural gas, better furnaces, all of those things is what
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Speaker 3: made it possible to clean London up now so far
6:29
Speaker 3: as child labor is concerned, right, what happens is what
6:35
Speaker 3: happens in the picture that's drawn of Britain of the
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Speaker 3: nineteenth century, right, is that there is no image of
6:40
Speaker 3: what went before. Of why is it that all of
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Speaker 3: these people from farming, from the rural areas came to
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Speaker 3: the city. Did they come to the city because they
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Speaker 3: thought it would be worse or because they thought it
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Speaker 3: would be better? And was it worse or was it better?
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Speaker 3: In the early days, you know, there are no very
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Speaker 3: few things that are hundred percent black or one hundred
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Speaker 3: percent white. Their various shades of gray, and what we
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Speaker 3: aim for is the least shade of gray that's possible.
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Speaker 3: I'm not going to say that all was rosy in
7:10
Speaker 3: Britain at that time. It wasn't. But look around the
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Speaker 3: world today, where is at least rosy in those countries
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Speaker 3: where things are run by the government, not in those
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Speaker 3: countries where private enterprise are sore and the same thing
7:22
Speaker 3: was true in Britain. The conditions in the rural areas
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Speaker 3: on the farms were far worse than the conditions in
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Speaker 3: the city, but they were not visible. They're hidden.
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Speaker 1: Nobody saw what the Dickens didn't stroll around the country.
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Speaker 1: So what you're saying, then, is that this mental image
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Speaker 1: that drives even to this day so much of the
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Speaker 1: environmental debate is simply it may be true as far
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Speaker 1: as it goes, but you'd advise greater historical understanding, but.
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Speaker 3: Not only historical present. Where are the most polluted areas
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Speaker 3: in the world today today? In Russia?
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Speaker 2: Russia? Right? Why?
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Speaker 3: Because every thing in Russia was controlled by the government.
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Speaker 3: There were no and I keep emphasizing, nobody is going
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Speaker 3: to take care of somebody else's property as well as
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Speaker 3: he'll take care of his own.
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Speaker 1: Property, But who should take care of the resources that
8:13
Speaker 1: we all share, such as the air we breathe. I'm
8:19
Speaker 1: going to push you one more time on the environment
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Speaker 1: air Here in California. It turns out there are thirty
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Speaker 1: million people who like to breathe, and we have, particularly
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Speaker 1: in the La Basin smog beginning in the nineteen seventies
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Speaker 1: that the environmental movement begins.
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Speaker 3: To small went back one two hundred years. There are
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Speaker 3: stories of the Indians describing that as a smoggy area.
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Speaker 2: So part of what's going on is that it is natural.
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Speaker 3: But no doubt the thing about that is there is
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Speaker 3: an argument for government requiring those who impose costs on
8:55
Speaker 3: third parties to pay for them. And the point is
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Speaker 3: with respect to smog the fish. Way to do it
9:00
Speaker 3: is to use the market.
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Speaker 2: And how do you create property rights in the air.
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Speaker 3: Well, you do it now by selling the right to
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Speaker 3: emit a certain amount of pollutants into the air. You
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Speaker 3: now have a market in affluent rights.
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Speaker 2: For large manufacturing concerns.
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Speaker 3: For manufacturing concerns, which is where most of it comes from.
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Speaker 3: And you do the same by charging essentially making it
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Speaker 3: a requirement that automobiles have to have the catalytic analytic
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Speaker 3: converters well, and that's effectively making individuals be responsible for
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Speaker 3: costly imposed on others. Remember what I said is the
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Speaker 3: key feature of a libertarian view is that you should
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Speaker 3: be free to do what you want, provided you don't
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Speaker 3: prevent other people from doing the same thing. And so
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Speaker 3: the only case for government is when it is not
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Speaker 3: feasible for market arrangements to make individuals pay compensate others
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Speaker 3: for any harm they impose on them. If you and
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Speaker 3: I enter into an agreement to buy or sell something, well,
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Speaker 3: that's our businesses. You may lose, I may lose, or
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Speaker 3: more likely we're both going to win. We're not going
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Speaker 3: to enter into it unless both of us think it's
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Speaker 3: better for us. But there are cases like the power
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Speaker 3: plant that emits smoke that dirties my shirt, in which
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Speaker 3: the power the company is imposing a cost on many
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Speaker 3: for which I'm not being compensated. Those are the only cases.
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Speaker 3: But you have to qualify that by noting that when
10:41
Speaker 3: government enters in it also is emitting smoke. It's also
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Speaker 3: imposing costs on third parties, because it's always a very
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Speaker 3: imperfect arrangement, and moreover, it always has to collect taxes,
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Speaker 3: and in the process of collecting taxes, it's, as I
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Speaker 3: always say, there's a smoke stack on the back of
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Speaker 3: every government program.
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Speaker 1: A smoke stack on the back of every government program.
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Speaker 1: By that you mean a distortion in the marketplace.
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Speaker 3: And imposing of course on third parties for which the
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Speaker 3: third parties are not compensated.
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Speaker 1: So the key characteristic in which you find a circumstance
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Speaker 1: where it's legitimate for the government to intervene would typically
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Speaker 1: be where property rights are vague or diffuse, is that correct.
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Speaker 3: And where it's almost impossible to make them precise. That
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Speaker 3: is a problem in the case of the power plant,
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Speaker 3: all right, is that there's no way in which you
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Speaker 3: can say, you have to get the agreement of each
11:37
Speaker 3: of the persons who's sure you're going to dirty right,
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Speaker 3: and pay them for the privilege of dirtying in their
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Speaker 3: shirts before.
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Speaker 2: You can do it.
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Speaker 1: So on the environment, the Greens actually do have a point.
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Speaker 2: That is one area where there is a strong case.
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Speaker 3: But in most cases in practice, when you look at it,
11:53
Speaker 3: and there are some people up at Perk as you know,
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Speaker 3: the right, who have Terry Anderson, who I'm sure has
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Speaker 3: been on your program, that's right, who have demonstrated that
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Speaker 3: there are many many cases in which market arrangements are
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Speaker 3: far more effective than command and control arrangement.
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Speaker 2: All right, So now we've got a little bit of
12:13
Speaker 2: a lot.
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Speaker 1: But there must be some areas food and drugs, for example,
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Speaker 1: where public safety can only be insured through government involvement. Right,
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Speaker 1: the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates everything from the
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Speaker 1: drugs that pharmaceutical companies may put on the market to
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Speaker 1: the ingredients in items that we purchase off the grocery
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Speaker 1: store shelves. Let me give you an example. Solidimidemid, everybody's
12:39
Speaker 1: favorite example. Well, I may be leading with my chin
12:41
Speaker 1: on this one, but I'm going to lead with it anyway.
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Speaker 2: Fifties and sixties.
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Speaker 1: It is marketed in Europe as a drug to help
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Speaker 1: women get through the nausea that they sometimes experienced during pregnancy.
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Speaker 2: The Food and Drug Administration said it had been.
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Speaker 1: Inadequately tested in the United States and forbad it to
12:57
Speaker 1: be marketed in this country, with the result that.
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Speaker 2: Thousands of children were born with horrible birth.
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Speaker 1: Defects in Europe two mothers who had used the littamite.
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Speaker 1: But that didn't happen to American children because the FDA
13:12
Speaker 1: had intervened and kept that drug off the market.
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Speaker 2: Thank god for the FDA.
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Speaker 3: Right, I'm wrong, all right? Why this is a case
13:19
Speaker 3: in which they did save lives. This was a good game.
13:22
Speaker 3: But I suppose they are equally slow in adopting a
13:27
Speaker 3: drug which turns out to be very good and very beneficial.
13:31
Speaker 3: How would you ever see the lives that are lost
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Speaker 3: because of that. You're an FBA official, right, you have
13:38
Speaker 3: a question of whether to approve or disapprove a new drug.
13:42
Speaker 3: If you approve it then it turns out to be
13:46
Speaker 3: a bad drug like solidimie, you're in the soup, your
13:49
Speaker 3: name is going to be on every front.
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Speaker 2: Job I get hauled up through Congress to testify.
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Speaker 3: On the other hand, if you disapprove it, but it
13:57
Speaker 3: turns out to be good, well, the later on you
14:00
Speaker 3: will prove it four or five years later. Nobody is
14:04
Speaker 3: going to complain about the fact that you didn't prove
14:06
Speaker 3: it earlier, except those greedy pharmaceutical companies that want to
14:11
Speaker 3: make profits at the expense of the public. As the saying,
14:14
Speaker 3: as everybody will say. And so the result is that
14:18
Speaker 3: the pressure on the FDA is always to be late
14:22
Speaker 3: and approval. And there is enormous evidence that they have
14:26
Speaker 3: caused more deaths by their late approvals than they have
14:31
Speaker 3: saved by their early approvals.
14:33
Speaker 2: So your view has abolished the FDA absolutely. And what
14:36
Speaker 2: comes up when it comes.
14:38
Speaker 3: Is it's in the self enters to pharmaceutical companies not
14:42
Speaker 3: to have these bad things. Do you think the manufacturer
14:45
Speaker 3: slidamide made a profit out of the litimide or loss.
14:48
Speaker 2: I see, And.
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Speaker 3: You have to have people should be responsible for harm
14:54
Speaker 3: that they do. It should have been possible absolutely, all right.
15:00
Speaker 1: If if Lily or Murk or somebody else comes up
15:04
Speaker 1: with a drug that does me harm, I go after them.
15:07
Speaker 1: I do a joint of class action with everybody else
15:09
Speaker 1: who's taken that pill, and we sue them for billions
15:12
Speaker 1: of dollars and wipe out their shareholder's equity. Absolutely, and
15:15
Speaker 1: then that they have every interest to be extremely rigorous
15:19
Speaker 1: in testing that drug before they make it available.
15:21
Speaker 3: And I may give you a differentations, all right. The
15:23
Speaker 3: rules imposed on airlines for safety, Supposedly, who has the
15:28
Speaker 3: most interest in preventing airline accidents.
15:31
Speaker 1: After the passenger themselves? The airlines?
15:34
Speaker 3: Well, it's not even clear that the passengers have more
15:37
Speaker 3: interest than the airline, all right, because included in the
15:40
Speaker 3: passengers are the pilots. Right of course, Why is a
15:44
Speaker 3: government going to improve airline safety? How are they going
15:47
Speaker 3: to do it? How do they add any incentive to
15:50
Speaker 3: anybody to improve airline safety?
15:52
Speaker 1: So far as I can, does Milton Friedman really oppose
15:55
Speaker 1: all health and safety regulation? Let me try this one
15:58
Speaker 1: on him, doesn't the public have the right, you know,
16:00
Speaker 1: about the nutritional content of the food it buys. Obesity
16:07
Speaker 1: is a big problem in this country. But up until
16:11
Speaker 1: of recent years, it was very tough for a diet
16:14
Speaker 1: or to pick up a package in the grocery store
16:16
Speaker 1: and figure out what the ingredients were, what the carbohydrate
16:18
Speaker 1: content is, the.
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Speaker 2: Fat calories, and so on and so forth.
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Speaker 1: So the government imposes quite modest rules for posting the
16:27
Speaker 1: nutritional values on packages and the grocery store. Now you
16:31
Speaker 1: can pick up say this has so much fat, this
16:32
Speaker 1: has less fat, I'll buy this now. Isn't that a
16:35
Speaker 1: modest and completely acceptable government intervention.
16:37
Speaker 3: So let's keep going, all right, And the government also
16:40
Speaker 3: prevent useful information from being passed on. Let me give
16:44
Speaker 3: you the simplest example. All right, aspirin. You I know,
16:48
Speaker 3: and I know that you're well advised to take an
16:52
Speaker 3: asprin every other day to reduce the danger of heart attack, right,
16:56
Speaker 3: but that's not allowed to be stated on an ASPERN.
16:59
Speaker 2: Package on account.
17:01
Speaker 3: Of FDA prohibited. They control the information that can be
17:07
Speaker 3: stated on a label. Now, there are some libertarian manufacturers
17:14
Speaker 3: of drugs who have proposed to have tried to push
17:18
Speaker 3: through the idea that they can put on the thing.
17:22
Speaker 3: This is what the FDA says, and this is what
17:24
Speaker 3: we say, choose, and they are not being allowed to
17:28
Speaker 3: do it.
17:28
Speaker 2: They're not even being allowed to do that.
17:30
Speaker 3: So that if customers really wanted to know about the ingredients,
17:35
Speaker 3: it would be in the self interest of the people
17:37
Speaker 3: producing it to put it on their packages. Those packages
17:41
Speaker 3: that had the ingredients on it would be more attractive
17:43
Speaker 3: to consumers than.
17:44
Speaker 2: Those that didn't.
17:46
Speaker 3: But now it's always a mystery to me why people
17:49
Speaker 3: think that some experts in a Washington office who don't
17:54
Speaker 3: know you, don't know me, don't know our children know
17:58
Speaker 3: better than you and I do we want to have
18:00
Speaker 3: on our packages and what we want our children to know.
18:03
Speaker 1: Once again, on balance, get rid of the FDA, get
18:05
Speaker 1: rid of these government regulations.
18:07
Speaker 3: As the FDA initially had the requirement to assure the
18:14
Speaker 3: safety but not the efficacy of the drugs that they approved.
18:20
Speaker 3: With the so called Keyfalva amendments that came in as
18:23
Speaker 3: a result of Philtima in which you brought, the FDA
18:27
Speaker 3: was expanded its mandate that it is required to assure
18:31
Speaker 3: both the safety and the efficacy of the drugs and
18:36
Speaker 3: that has enormously raised the cost of getting drugs approved.
18:40
Speaker 3: And if you wanted to have a halfway house, you
18:43
Speaker 3: could go back to the earlier standard where the FDA
18:46
Speaker 3: had to certify the safety but did not have to
18:49
Speaker 3: express a judgment on the efficacy.
18:51
Speaker 1: The FDA simply ensures that pharmaceutical companies live up to
18:54
Speaker 1: the old dictum first to do no harm. This pill
18:57
Speaker 1: may not change your life, but it won't hurt you,
19:00
Speaker 1: for it may be marketed. Okay, Now let me move
19:02
Speaker 1: to another case. And this one, this one I think
19:05
Speaker 1: is pretty tough no for a libertarian, all right, So
19:08
Speaker 1: you're allowed to take.
19:09
Speaker 2: A deep breath before I hit you with this one.
19:10
Speaker 1: If you want to civil rights by civil rights, by
19:15
Speaker 1: what I mean by civil rights is.
19:18
Speaker 2: To take a raw case. The South under Jim Crow
19:22
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties.
19:23
Speaker 3: But that was a case a government of too much government.
19:26
Speaker 2: It was too little, I thought.
19:28
Speaker 1: The South in those days, they had relatively low tax rates,
19:30
Speaker 1: relatively low.
19:31
Speaker 3: But the government provided for for separation. It was a
19:36
Speaker 3: government that enforced separate areas for blacks and white. It
19:40
Speaker 3: was a government that enforced the law that the blacks
19:45
Speaker 3: had to sit at the back of the buses. Those
19:46
Speaker 3: were all government laws.
19:48
Speaker 2: In the absence of those government laws, it wouldn't have
19:50
Speaker 2: taken place.
19:51
Speaker 3: In other words, the government laws, you would have had
19:53
Speaker 3: a gradual development. It would have taken place somewhere and
19:55
Speaker 3: not otherwhere. And you would have and look at what
19:58
Speaker 3: happened in the North, where there weren't those gouvern there
20:01
Speaker 3: may have been a Undoubtedly, don't misunderstand me, there is prejudice,
20:06
Speaker 3: there's no question right, and undoubtedly it has bad effects
20:09
Speaker 3: on various people. But in the absence of the laws
20:13
Speaker 3: in the South, it would have broken down much faster
20:16
Speaker 3: and much earlier. That's if you could cite any case
20:21
Speaker 3: for libertarianism.
20:22
Speaker 1: That's it, all right, So my strongest any Milton Friedman
20:25
Speaker 1: has told us why the government's.
20:26
Speaker 2: Role in our lives should be limited.
20:28
Speaker 1: But how limited, Let's ask him about the structure of
20:31
Speaker 1: the federal government itself. I have a list here of
20:37
Speaker 1: the fourteen cabinet departments.
20:39
Speaker 2: Now fourteen is a lot for television. So I want
20:41
Speaker 2: to just go right down the.
20:42
Speaker 1: List quickly and have you give me a thumbs up
20:45
Speaker 1: or thumbs down, Keep them or abolish them. Department of Agriculture,
20:49
Speaker 1: abolish gone, Department of Commerce, abolish gone, Department of Defense,
20:55
Speaker 1: keep keep it.
20:57
Speaker 2: Department of Education abolished, gone Energy abolish.
21:02
Speaker 3: How except as energy ties in with the military, well.
21:05
Speaker 2: Then we shove it under defense.
21:07
Speaker 1: A little bit that handles the nuclear plutonium and so
21:10
Speaker 1: forth goes under defense, but we abolish the rest of it.
21:12
Speaker 1: Health and human services.
21:14
Speaker 3: There is some there are There is room for some
21:16
Speaker 3: public health activities to prevent the contagion such a thing as,
21:23
Speaker 3: for example.
21:24
Speaker 1: So you keep the National Institutes of Health, say, and.
21:29
Speaker 3: Those are mostly a research agencies. No, No, that's a
21:32
Speaker 3: question of whether the government should be involved in financing research.
21:36
Speaker 2: And the answer is no.
21:37
Speaker 3: Well that's a complicated that's a very complicated issue, and
21:40
Speaker 3: it's not an easy answer with respect to that.
21:43
Speaker 2: We'll eliminate half of the Department of Health Service. Okay,
21:46
Speaker 2: one half. There we go.
21:47
Speaker 1: Housing an Urban Development, Oh, didn't even pause over that
21:50
Speaker 1: one Department of the Interior.
21:51
Speaker 3: Oh well, but Housing an Urban development has done an
21:54
Speaker 3: enormous amount of arm My god, if you think of
21:57
Speaker 3: the way in which they've destroyed parts of cities under
22:02
Speaker 3: the rulebric of eliminating slums. Jack Kemp, you know you
22:07
Speaker 3: remember Martin Anderson wrote a book on the Federal Bulldozer
22:12
Speaker 3: describing the effect of the urban development. There have been
22:16
Speaker 3: many more dwelling units torn down in the in the
22:21
Speaker 3: in the name of public housing that have been built.
22:24
Speaker 1: Jack Kemp has proposed selling to the current inhabitants of
22:29
Speaker 1: public housing their unit, their townhouse, their apartment for a
22:34
Speaker 1: dollar apiece and just shifting the ownership to the get.
22:37
Speaker 3: If you got rid of the Department of Housing and
22:40
Speaker 3: Urban Development, it would be worth doing that.
22:42
Speaker 2: All right, done, that's gone.
22:44
Speaker 1: Department of the Interior, your beloved National Park Service.
22:48
Speaker 3: Well, given that, the problem there is you first have
22:52
Speaker 3: to sell off all the land that the government owns.
22:54
Speaker 3: But that's what you should do. But it could be done.
22:57
Speaker 3: It could be done. You should do that. There's no reasons.
23:01
Speaker 3: The government now owns something like one third of all
23:03
Speaker 3: the land in the country.
23:05
Speaker 2: And that's too much. Should go down to zero.
23:08
Speaker 3: Should go down, well, not entirely zero. They ought to
23:11
Speaker 3: own the land on which government buildings are.
23:14
Speaker 2: Okay, terrific. Department of Justice.
23:17
Speaker 3: Oh yes, keep that keep that way.
23:18
Speaker 1: Labor gone, state, keep keep it. Transportation gone gone. The treasury,
23:27
Speaker 1: you have to keep it to collect taxes.
23:29
Speaker 2: All right, collect taxes through the treasury veterans affairs.
23:32
Speaker 3: You can regard the veteran affairs as a way of
23:36
Speaker 3: paying essentially salaries for services of those who have been
23:39
Speaker 3: in the armed force. But you ought to be able
23:42
Speaker 3: to get rid of it.
23:43
Speaker 2: You should pay it by.
23:44
Speaker 1: Pay it off it off, pay off lump sums. But
23:47
Speaker 1: that's right, and just get rid of it, Okay, Milton Friedman.
23:50
Speaker 1: If you are made dictator for one day, the next day, I.
23:54
Speaker 3: Want to know, No, I don't want to be made dictator.
23:56
Speaker 2: You wouldn't.
23:56
Speaker 3: I don't believe in dictators. Okay. I believe we want
23:59
Speaker 3: to bring about change by the agreement for the citizens.
24:05
Speaker 2: I don't believe in entrepreneural Let me put it this way.
24:08
Speaker 3: Then I can't persuade. If we can't persuade the public
24:12
Speaker 3: that it's desirable to do these things, we have no
24:14
Speaker 3: right to impose them, even if we had the power
24:16
Speaker 3: to do it.
24:17
Speaker 2: All right, from fourteen departments down to or.
24:21
Speaker 3: Basic fundamental functions? What are its fundamental functions? Preserve of
24:27
Speaker 3: the peace, defend the country right, provide a mechanism whereby
24:31
Speaker 3: individuals can adjudicate their disputes.
24:34
Speaker 2: That's the Justice department.
24:35
Speaker 3: Department protect individuals from being coerced by other individuals or police.
24:42
Speaker 3: The function right and now, this is both the central
24:47
Speaker 3: government and the state and local governments. The police functions
24:51
Speaker 3: primarily local and central right, and those are the fundamental
24:55
Speaker 3: functions of government in my opinion.
24:57
Speaker 2: Builton Friedman, thank you very much.
25:01
Speaker 1: Doctor Friedman believes in limited government, very limited government. If
25:05
Speaker 1: I understand his principles correctly, he'd say that the choice
25:08
Speaker 1: whether to wear a motorcycle helmet shouldn't between me and
25:11
Speaker 1: the state government in Sacramento, but between me and if anyone,
25:14
Speaker 1: my insurance company.
25:16
Speaker 2: Better keep those premiums down.
25:20
Speaker 1: I'm Peter Robinson, thanks for joining us.
26:00
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56:00
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