Many would consider the Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, the Godfather of American conservative libertarianism. In an interview in 1999, Dr. Friedman was asked the definition of a libertarian.
Friedman discussed two types of libertarianism. The more extreme form says it’s immoral to initiate any force of any kind on anyone. So, all government is immoral in and of itself. He agrees that is too drastic.
The second form, which he ascribes to, is consequentialist libertarianism, which is someone who "believes in the least amount of government intervention consistent with a maximum freedom for each individual to pursue his own values as long has he doesn’t interfere with other individuals pursuing their values. So, we do need government, but only in the areas where free markets or private enterprise is not capable of meeting the need."
Friedman goes on to say he supports a free market and strong private property rights only on the grounds that they bring about favorable consequences such as prosperity or efficiency. His philosophy is also based on the fact that no human will maintain someone else’s property as well as his own. He uses that phrase when talking about the failure of government housing.
Host Peter Robinson proposes the example of how dirty London was during the early 1800s. During that time the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, with manufacturing increasing but making the city very dirty. The factories burned a dirty form of coal as their energy. This was during a time before government regulations came into play.
Friedman puzzled over the idea that government regulations eventually cleaned the city up. He explained, “It wasn’t government that cleaned it up, it was private enterprise who created alternative forms of energy, such as natural gas, oil, and improved furnaces, which cleaned up London.”
In another example, Dr. Friedman talks about airline safety. He asks, "In airline safety who has the biggest incentive to want airplanes as safe as possible?" Of course, the answer is the airlines. How can government make the plane safer than the company who is building or maintaining the plane? The airline has the biggest incentive to make sure their planes are safe, or they won’t stay in business.
The interviewer reads a list of 14 cabinet positions and asks Dr. Friedman to answer whether we should keep or abolish each. The results below clearly indicate that Dr. Friedman believed that only the fundamental functions of government should remain.
| Department | Abolish | Keep |
| Agriculture | X | |
| Commerce | X | |
| Defense | X | |
| Education | X | |
| Energy | X | |
| Health & Human Services | X part | |
| Housing & Urban Dev | X | |
| Interior | X after selling gov. land | |
| Justice | X | |
| Labor | X | |
| State | X | |
| Transportation | X | |
| Treasury | X |
No doubt Dr. Milton Freidman was one of the most brilliant economists of all times or at least of modern times. Even though Dr. Friedman was not a constitutional scholar, he did realize we could use Article V of the US Constitution to abolish the very departments he knew were of little use to the American people!
We can help Dr. Friedman realize his dream. Go to conventionofstates.com, sign the petition and let’s put our country back to the way it was!
