Against Milton Friedman

Upon seeing "Fear the Boom and Bust”, the Keynes versus Hayek rap video, the following email was sent to the producers of that video:

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Ayn R. Key wrote:

Having Keynes versus Hayek was great. Loved the imagery of alcohol and hangover, and the reference to Tim and Ben.

Next, Hayek (or Rothbard or Mises) versus Friedman (or Fisher, where Friedman got all his ideas from) please.

I'm tired of people thinking that Chicago School Monetarists are some sort of libertarians.

The following response was forthcoming:

On Thu, Apr22, 2010 at 9:16 AM, John Papola wrote:

Thanks for the note! Explaining the differences of the two schools of thought is useful and we'll be getting to it in our extended content via interviews. It's a little too nuanced for a rap song.

Have you read Roger Garrison's "Time and Money”? There is much more in common between the Austrian theory of the business cycle and Milton's monetarism than meets the eye. If we can't call Milton a libertarian, we're doomed. I'm not big on libertarian factionalism. Compared with our opponents on the Keynes/Marx statist side, the differences between Hayek and Friedman are inconsequential in my opinion. Friedman was also very successful in moving public opinion and the profession away from Keynes. For that we should all be grateful.

Friedman, Hayek, Mises and Rothbard are all awesome in different ways.

For reasons unknown, Milton Friedman is considered to be a libertarian thinker, especially in matters economic. He is often used as an example of libertarian thinking by those who are not libertarians but wish to reference libertarians to support a point.

The problem is, Milton Friedman was a Monetarist. As pointed out, Monetarism is not the same thing as Capitalism. When compared to Keynesianism then of course it appears to be more libertarian, but that is an awfully low bar to measure against.

There are many critiques libertarians can make against Friedman, such as his relationship to Pinochet or how he instituted income tax withholding, but the most fundamental one is that he, like Irving Fisher, advocated central banking.

If Keynesians are to be considered as saying that two and two make eight, and Austrians are to be considered as saying that two and two make four, then Monetarists try to position themselves as moderates by saying that two and two make six. They may be closer than Keynesians, but they are still quite wrong. Central banking, the defining position of Monetarists, is causing yet another catastrophic collapse, and people actually are calling it libertarian? Calling it so is a gift to the statists that they couldn't even hope for.