Free To Choose

Though Keynes is mentioned only three times in the book, he looms in the background as one of the Friedmans’ bugbears. Keynes’s monetary theory suggests to governments that they can control prosperity by manipulating the money supply; this opens the floodgates of centralized fiscal mismanagement in the 1930s and beyond.

Mann guides the movement for education reform in the 1830s and 1840s. Mann argues that the public owes its children an education for the good of society. His approach replaces the private one that already enrolls most school-age children in voluntary learning and leads to the compulsory government school system of today. The lack of alternatives and competition in the modern practice is a chief cause of poor educational quality, especially in the inner city, where a responsive school system is most needed and least available.

President Roosevelt, a hero to millions for leading America through the Depression, is criticized by the Friedmans for vastly increasing centralized government control of economic activities, a policy the Friedmans believe greatly lengthens the Depression. Those controls are still in place decades later and still create friction and expense for the US economy.

Smith, an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, publishes in 1776 The Wealth of Nations, the book that launches modern economics. Smith’s most famous insight is that people, working voluntarily for their own benefit, tend to generate wealth for society as a whole. This principle Smith calls “an invisible hand” that leads people to do good simply by doing well. Smith also argues against trade restrictions, which benefit business combines and aristocracies at the expense of the common citizen.