From the Heritage Blog,
Some excerpts from Friedman's terse but awesomely crisp rejoinder on capitalism's "greed"...
``The world runs on individuals pursuing their selfish interest. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus."
``In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you are talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you wanna know where the masses are worst off is the kind of the society that departs from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold the candle to the productive activities that are unleashed via free enterprise."
``And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? Do you think a Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think, excuse me…if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees from the basis of the virtues of the people appointed or on the basis of political clout? Is it really true that political self interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
No comments:
Post a Comment