Milton Friedman's Defense Of Greed Ruined A Whole Generation Of Economists ft. Richard Wolff

[Music] but first we have a very special edition of dad featuring our teacher and mentor professor Richard wolf and math we have the bad sound ready oh please put on your headphones for this professor leave me not good oh well it's also really bad for you not good believe me not good no good really bad for you do you want to put on your headphones to hear the Milton Friedman clip where are you you play it out loud alright so we have an old clip of Milton Friedman on greed and we just wanted to play it he's on Phil Donny oh and we'll see how much we get stomach and then professor wolf is gonna respond to a historic edition of dad featuring Milton Friedman when you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth the the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries when you see so few haves and so many have-nots when you when you see the greed and the concentration of power with it don't you ever did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether Greed's a good idea to run on well first of all tell me is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed you think Russia doesn't run on greed you think China doesn't run on greed what is greed of course none of us are greedy it's only the other fellow who's greedy this the world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests the great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a from a bureaucrat Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way in the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about the only cases in recorded history or weather where they have had capitalism and largely free trade if you want to know where the masses are worse than worse off worst off it's exactly in the kinds of societies that 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 a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise so it seems to reward not virtue as much as ability to manipulate the system and what does reward virtue you think the Communist commissar rewards virtue you think a Hitler rewards virtue you think excuse me if you'll pardon me do you think American presidents reward virtue do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed on the basis of their political clout is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self enters you know I think you're taking a lot of things for granted and just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us well I don't even trust you to do that Wow well dunked and owned a professor wolf this is the best they had what's your response well every time I listen to mr. Friedman I close my eyes and I say to myself there's living proof for it was living proof that the Nobel Prize is not given to anybody except if they total line he got a Nobel Prize for telling us that greed is the engine of human behavior that human beings pursue their own self-interest this is a man who presumably has a modicum of education if he did and I really I I must wonder listening to this kind of drivel what what what the world did he never understand psychology for a hundred years psychologists have explained to us with empirical studies in theoretical work that human beings are bundles of contradictions but what is my self-interest is something I only dimly perceive and moreover many of the things I'm interested in contradict one another I both like and don't like people I both have drawn to and repulsed by this thing I want that but I don't really I went and I got that and now I wonder having consumed it why did I ever do that because it didn't like it at all we are not some kind of calculus machine this is the first noble truth of Buddhism a constant state of dissatisfaction this mechanical know we're here pursuing our self-interest as if we knew what it was human beings don't know and they're changing all the time so even if they know their knowledge is out-of-date within moments of having conceived the idea these are not complex ideas but they're way beyond anything mr. Friedman can manage and that's not by the way because he's illiterate or uneducated it's because he has a job to do and that job is to sell private enterprise capitalists private enterprise is the best thing the only thing the right thing just peed it over and over let me tell you a personal story I was a graduate student at Stanford University many years ago and one of my good friends who shared my distaste for capitalism which was already developed then that could be your autobiography is taste for capitalism yes and he came and he came to me one day and said well I'm leaving so what do you mean you leave in the middle of our graduate education here he said well I got an offer I can't refuse what are you talking about I'm going to the University of Chicago I said why he said cuz Milton Friedman offered me a quantity of money I never thought I'd see to come there and finish my dissertation working with him and that man went on to be a professor which he I think he just retired from MIT which is a very high-level Economics Department his radicalism became quiet something he didn't give up but he kept very quiet so a few of us knew about it because we were his friends when he was younger but officially he was a Chicago boy as they said and I remember thinking oh that's where all that money that he gets from corporations then begins to develop a school so they can go out and say what the corporate is very smart of the corporation's to find a Milton Friedman who will then develop this ideological kind of cohort that will go out and beat the drum you know there's a simple story to tell too he liked to go around and when I was a graduate student I heard him a couple times as he came through and he would tell this story about how every time private enterprise takes something over it's done very well and every time the government takes it over it's done very poorly and I won't repeat what we've already talked about that the the evidence he used was the low profit rate say of Airlines or of trains and okay so I had to explain to my students that that was the whole point it's a subsidy of price so that to say the private is high and the public is low as if it were an outcome misunderstands that it was the goal and this is the point in the first place but then I would begin to explain to my students that for example in the last 30 years many of the municipalities in Europe that privatized water electricity transport gas and so forth have reinitialized because the rates are too high because of what the private sector did and so the the whole empirical basis was just created by him to support this but it also shows you that if the wind is blowing in that direction which in the period of mr. Friedman's ascendancy it was corporations were becoming major players in shaping what was going on economics was becoming cheerleading for capitalism the man who led that and who could make that the wind of the time was able to get the Nobel Prize and have many of his students also get the Nobel Prize because they were on the Nobel Committee that awarded the prizes to what they did and it really shows you as Marx once said that the leading idea of any age are the ideas in the leaders of that age and you know that that's what what you have at that time all that leadership is now dissolving the crash in 2008 and 9 coming at the end of a neoliberal explosion was a sign that this is not the solution to everything this is a disaster and so it's become harder and harder and the people holding on in the economics profession in the United States the leftovers if you like come from Milton Friedman and they don't want to give up their positions you have them all over the United States holding on to the economics departments but literally dying out now to be replaced by a new generation much more ambivalent about capitalism than these cheerleaders ever were you've just watched a Michael Brooks show video and you can watch all of our full main live shows every Tuesday night at around 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time and subscribe to get all of the clips you want we're covering the globe we're focusing on international relations the intellectual dark web we're having fun we're doing deep dives with a lot of amazing guests of course become a patron for the whole thing at patreon.com slash t MBS or subscribe to this youtube channel and help us keep growing and get that content out there subscribe below

Channel: The Michael Brooks Show

Views: 116,634

Rating: 4.7126331 out of 5

Keywords: tmbs, the michael brooks show, michael brooks, matt lech, majority report, tyt, sam seder, literary hangover, david griscom, marxism, socialism, left, dsa, democratic socialists, Richard Wolff, Economic Update, Milton Friedman, Libertariasm vs. Marxism, Milton Friedman Destroyed, Professor Wolff

Id: NngfZJmx5ow

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Not just economists but political scientists, libertarians, and politicians. The guy was a charlatan. Essays in Positive Economics is worse than anything by Butler, Baudrillard or any other post modernist whose name starts with a 'B.' Milton regularly misused physics and mathematics to make his circular reasoning seem more credible.

[u/Maegaranthelas]

I just started reading The Shock Doctrine, and I feel like Friedman and his theories might have caused the most suffering in human history. It's nauseating and infuriating.

[u/punchthedog420]

Egad, Friedman argues as if there's a binary world of libertarian free markets v totalitarianism. He also makes a lot of presumptions and simplifications about human desires, which Wolff obviously was most upset about.