Re:A Defense of libertarianism (and response to Zed, etc.)
by xenophanes on Sunday January 11, 2009 @12:34PM
(#429319)
Milton Friedman is not the only person to sometimes say unlibertarian things. To start with, you can add to your list David Friedman, Ayn Rand, and F A Hayek.
Next you can add me. I think libertarianism today is too isolationist regarding war and terrorism.
But we cannot find the truth by analyzing who said what. The important thing is which ideas are right, not who said them.
Ah, we've pinpointed the nonsense! I'll leave you with some words from Milton Friedman on the New Deal:
> The other part of the new deal policy was relief and recovery … providing relief for the unemployed, providing jobs for the unemployed, and motivating the economy to expand … an expansive monetary policy. Those parts of the New Deal I did support. (…) Because it was a very exceptional circumstance. We'd gotten into an extraordinarily difficult situation, unprecedented in the nation's history. You had millions of people out of work. Something had to be done; it was intolerable. And it was a case in which, unlike most cases, the short run deserved to dominate.
With the point being, sometimes government is necessary and sometimes it's not. It's not an all-or-nothing endeavour.