Milton Friedman: How Should we Evaluate The Man Responsible For The Worst Ever Idea Unleashed Upon Humanity?
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The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist
The words above were by the British economist —John Maynard Keynes.
And several years later, those words are powerfully true as the very day he uttered them.
When it hits us that the entire world of 8 billion people have been in the vice-like grip of one man’s idea, only then can we begin to realize and appreciate the scale of damage wrought upon humanity by Milton Friedman.
To make sense of all this, we need to step back in time for a minute.
It’s 1945.
Much of Western Europe is seriously destroyed in a war which brought the world to the very brink of destruction. The highly militaristic Germany and Japan were determined to bring everyone under their control and if it weren’t for the combined efforts of the Russians and the United States, the outcome would have been vastly…