I don’t agree with Friedman on the central bank, and I am not implying he was a libertarian. But, at 2:28 to the end of video, he talks about “a clean slate” that leads to an acceleration of economic freedom (dare I say “liberty”?) At 4:30, he says the “slate gets filled up…it’s easier to create laws than to repeal them”. At 5:10, he is asked “what would it take for there to be a clean slate today”?
He then suggests that government spending should be reduced (contradiction in terms, amazingly naive) and the welfare state should be reigned in (again, fantasy).
QUESTION: Could it be that his “clean slate” hypothesis has merit, and that the clean state he was speculating about was something that could not have been anticipated in 1977; the internet? The internet has “removed constraints that have held people back”, as he defines a clean slate.
There is a combonation of thing’s going on and that need to be analyzed.
The reason he brought up government spending and welfare is because they have the tednency to pull responsibility from the individual involved and leaves it up to the government. After a while the government accumulates more and more responsiblity which means they become more and more tryannical.
This Thomas Jefferson quote put’s it well…
“I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.” - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith,Paris, 13 Nov. 1787
Basically every nation in history would accumulate enough regulations, laws, and restrictions that would limit their progress. Sometimes it would stifle technological advancement and in the case of the American Revolution it breeched on rights. What Jefferson and Friedman are saying is you need to have a revolution (violent or non-violent) that refreshes society. The internet is this solution. With it’s limitless communication it provides a platform for not only Americans, but people around the world to communicate ideas of various subjects. When an idea fails it is changed almost instanteously. Friedman’s worry is that with how the government votes in and takes out laws that it will hinder us and eventually lead to a breakdown of our society causing a severe rebellion or revolution. I personally believe the internet provides as a counter-agent to this breakdown as it produces “minor revolutions” on a constant basis, but the government is having a hard time keeping up with it and sooner or later there needs to be a change.
It is a law of nature that all systems tend to become corrupt and break down over time. That is why nature works by reproduction and growing new systems from seeds.
In a market economy, old companies tend to become corrupt and fail, only to be broken up and taken over by new, rising companies. This doesn’t happen with states, and that is why they are so dangerous.
Excellent incite. It would seem, though, that the collapse of an empire would be the break down described above. Is it that, with a state, there are no “little break downs” with renewals, just one big collapse?