In Milton Friedman on Freedom, editors Robert Leeson and Charles Palm, both of the Hoover Institution, have assembled many of his most important articles and chapters that make his case for freedom. (Disclosure: I was a friend of both Milton and Rose Friedman and am a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, where Friedman was a senior fellow from 1977 to his death in 2006.)

The book is well worth reading. There is often overlap between sections so that you will read the same data or important facts three or four times in working through the chapters. Some might find this annoying; others might find that the repetition reinforces the message. In this book, you will see Friedman making mainly a consequentialist case for freedom—it works so well, giving us prosperity—even though he takes pains to point out that his case is a philosophical one based on moral relativism. He is at his strongest when he draws on his economic and statistical skills. He is at his weakest in making his philosophical case.

Disparate voices / One of his strongest cases for freedom is that the typically impersonal forces in the market cause harmonious interaction between people who will never meet each other and who, if they did, might dislike each other. In a 1955 article in the volume, Friedman writes, “The purchasers of the wheat do not know whether it has been produced by a Communist or a Fascist, a white man or a Negro; they could hardly discriminate if they wanted to.”

In that same article, he contrasts the relative ease with which socialists and communists in the United States can put together newspapers and magazines with the difficulty that proponents of capitalism would have publishing a pro-capitalist magazine in a socialist society. He writes:

Suppose a change to a collectivist economic society with government control of the bulk of economic activity. How could the proponents of a return to capitalism secure the resources with which to publish a magazine urging their point of view? Through a government fund for dissidents? Through the collection of small sums from millions of government employees? If they had the resources in the form of funds, what guarantee could they have that the government would sell them paper on the same terms as it does to others?

He points out that in a free market, by contrast, “The sellers of paper do not know whether the paper is going to the Daily Worker or the Foundation for Economic Education.” Strikingly, he points out, no proponent of socialism has “even faced this problem squarely.” Recall that he wrote this in 1955; 62 years later, I still don’t know of any socialist who has faced this problem squarely. Sadly, I can think of some socialists, such as the late philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who didn’t (and don’t) consider it a problem that advocates of capitalism wouldn’t be able to publish their ideas.

Always the empiricist, Friedman, in a chapter reprinted from Capitalism and Freedom, discusses how free market forces undercut the Hollywood blacklist that was used against writers who were communists or alleged communists. Throughout his telling, his passion for and delight in freedom of speech—even for those whose message he detests—shines through.

Free markets / One of his biggest contributions to freedom was his active participation in President Nixon’s Commission on the All-Volunteer Force. In 1970 that commission came out 14–0, with one abstention, in favor of ending the draft, and the draft was officially ended in June 1973.

I would have liked to have seen in this volume Friedman’s “Why Not a Voluntary Army?” his cogent case against the draft on economic and philosophical grounds that was published in the New Individualist Review in 1967. Instead, the editors chose a speech that he gave at West Point in 1985. (In it, he mistakenly says that the commission had 12 members, initially split evenly for and against the draft, and that in the end all 12 favored ending the draft.) The speech is good, but not as good as his 1967 article.

However, the speech has the virtue of recounting his famous dialogue with Gen. William Westmoreland during the commission hearings. Here’s Friedman’s account of their exchange:

One person who testified was General Westmoreland. He was then, I believe, chief of staff of the army, and he was testifying in that capacity. Like almost all military men who testified, he testified against a volunteer armed force. In the course of his testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I stopped him and said, “General, would you rather command an army of slaves?” He drew himself back and said, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.” I replied, “General, I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.” But I went on to say, “If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by a mercenary physician, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.”

One of his most impressive abilities was his empirical sense. He was rarely swayed by the more-visible to ignore the less-visible. This shows clearly in a 1962 article, “Is a Free Society Stable?” originally published in the New Individualist Review. In it, Friedman points out that when he asks people to list the major industries in the United States, they always list those in which there are few firms. He writes, “They list the automobile industry, never the garment industry, although the garment industry is far larger by any economic measure than the automobile industry.” He continues, “I have never had anybody list the industry of providing domestic service, although it employs many more people than the steel industry.” His point is that the higher visibility of concentrated industries leads people to exaggerate the degree of industrial concentration and, because they tend to equate concentration and monopoly power, to exaggerate the degree of monopoly.

On monopoly, though, even Friedman got a little confused. In a chapter from Capitalism and Freedom he writes that monopoly “inhibits effective freedom by denying individuals alternatives to the particular exchange.” If the monopoly came about because of a government preventing competition, then he would be roughly right, although even in that case it’s the government that inhibits freedom, not the monopolist per se. But he is discussing monopoly more generally and he is making his argument even if the source of the monopoly is not government restrictions. Friedman argues that what’s great about competition is that “the consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal.” It’s true that it’s great to have other sellers so that a buyer is not at the mercy of one seller, but if there is only one seller, there is nothing inherently coercive about that. In a free market, even the most extreme monopoly can’t coerce me into buying from it.

I remember sitting at dinner with the Friedmans at the somewhat legendary first Austrian economics conference in South Royalton, Vt. in June 1974. I made a putdown of John Kenneth Galbraith, who, I knew, was one of their neighbors in Vermont where they had their summer home. Rose quickly upbraided me, quite correctly, pointing out that Ken was a friend and that they simply disagreed about economics. That was an important lesson for me at the age of 23. Milton deals with Galbraith the right way, by going after his ideas. In a 1976 article reprinted in this book, he writes:

Some years ago, in an article published in the New York Times Magazine, John Kenneth Galbraith said that there was no problem in New York City that would not be solved if the city government’s budget was doubled. In the interim the city government’s budget has been quadrupled and so have the problems.

Morality and freedom / What is Friedman’s basic argument for freedom? One might think that, given his emphasis on freedom’s consequences, his case is a combination of consequentialism—free markets do so well for us—and the standard libertarian moral arguments against the initiation of force. But at various points in the book, Friedman takes pains to say that his case for freedom is not about consequences at all but, rather, is based on our ignorance about what is moral.

In a 1974 Reason interview reprinted in the book he states that if we knew for sure what sin is, then if we saw someone sinning, we ourselves would be sinners if we didn’t forcibly prevent him from sinning. He asks, “How can you allow a man the freedom to sin?” He answers his own question: “The only answer I can give is that I cannot be absolutely certain that I know what is sin.” In a 1991 article, “Say ‘No’ to Intolerance,” he repeats that argument.

I thought I knew Friedman’s thinking very well, but I confess I hadn’t known how strongly he believed this argument. I’m not a professional philosopher, but I suspect that philosophers could find large weaknesses in his argument. One is that if we can’t know what sin is, then we don’t know what constitutes right and wrong. And if we don’t know that, how can we say that it’s wrong for government to use force to prevent people from doing what some people regard as sinning?

But Friedman did not make his living as a philosopher. He made it as an economist and, increasingly in his last 30 years, as an articulate, passionate, and effective crusader for liberty. Thank goodness he did.