Frases de David Friedman

“Una sociedad objetiva ideal con un gobierno limitado es superior a una sociedad anarcocapitalista en precisamente el mismo modo en el que una sociedad socialista ideal es superior a una sociedad capitalista. El socialismo funciona mejor con gente perfecta que el capitalismo con gente imperfecta; el gobierno limitado funciona mejor con gente perfecta que el anarcocapitalismo con gente imperfecta. Y es mejor ponerse bikini cuando el sol brilla que impermeable cuando está lloviendo. Pero ese no es un argumento válido en contra de utilizar un paraguas.”

“Creo que aunque hay ciertas tareas importantes que por motivos especiales son difíciles de realizar bajo instituciones estrictamente de propiedad privada, estas dificultades son teóricas, y pueden ser solucionables en la práctica. Sostengo que no hay ninguna función adecuada para el gobierno. En este sentido soy un anarquista. Todo lo que el gobierno hace puede ser clasificado en dos categorías: aquello que podemos suprimir hoy y aquello que esperamos poder suprimir mañana. La mayor parte de las funciones gubernamentales pertenecen al primer tipo.”

“En el estado socialista ideal, el poder no atraerá a maniáticos sedientos de poder. La gente que toma las decisiones no mostrará el más leve sesgo debido a sus propios intereses. No habrá forma de que un hombre inteligente manipule a las instituciones para servir a sus propios intereses. Y los ríos fluirán montaña arriba.”

“El uso directo de la fuerza física es una solución tan pobre al problema de los recursos limitados que normalmente sólo es empleado por niños pequeños y por las grandes naciones. La solución usual es que el uso de cada cosa debe ser decidido por una persona o por algún grupo de personas organizado bajo algún conjunto de reglas. Se llama a tales cosas la propiedad. Si cada cosa es controlada por un individuo que tiene el poder para transferir ese mando a cualquier otro individuo, nosotros lo llamamos la institución de la propiedad privada.”

“Mi preferencia es por el tipo de instituciones económicas que han sido llamadas, creo que por Robert LeFevre, agóricas. Bajo las instituciones agóricas casi todo el mundo trabaja por cuenta propia. En lugar de la corporación existen grandes grupos de emprendedores relacionados por el comercio, no por la autoridad. Cada uno vende, no su tiempo, sino lo que su tiempo produce.”

“Puedo predecir que, si aparecieran instituciones anarcocapitalistas en este país el día de mañana, la heroína sería legal en Nueva York e ilegal en la mayoría de otros lugares.”

“Legal rules are to be judged by the structure of incentives they establish and the consequences of people altering their behavior in response to those incentives”

“[T]he assumption describes our actions, not our thoughts. If you had to understand something intellectually in order to do it, none of us would be able to walk.
Economics is based on the assumption that people have reasonably simple objectives and choose means to achieve them. Both assumptions are false-but useful.
Suppose someone is rational only half the time. Since there is generally one right way of doing things and many wrong ways, the rational behavior can be predicted but the irrational cannot. If we assume he is rational, we predict his behavior correctly about half of the tie - far from perfect, but a lot better then nothing. If I could do well at the racetrack I would be a very rich man.
[R]ationality is an assumption I make about other people. I know myself.
[R]ationality is an assumption I make about other people. I know myself well enough to allow for the consequences of my own irrationality. But for the vast mass of my fellow humans, about whom I know very little, rationality is the best predictive assumption available.”

“In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks. People who make decisions will show no slightest bias towards their own interests. There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends. And the rivers will run uphill.”

“David D. Friedman is the one of the most important living anarcho-capitalist philosophers. He has added a philosopher's insistence on consistency to the firm grasp of economic principles he presumably learned at the paternal knees.”

“We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a power grab by the men with the guns (safety is not an available option), but whether it would be safer than our society is from a comparable seizure of power by the men with the guns. I think the answer is yes. In our society, the men who must engineer such a coup are politicians, military officers, and policemen, men selected precisely for the characteristic of desiring power and being good at using it. They are men who already believe that they have a right to push other men around - that is their job. They are particularly well qualified for the job of seizing power. Under anarcho-capitalism the men in control of protection agencies are selected for their ability to run an efficient business and please their customers. It is always possible that some will turn out to be secret power freaks as well, but it is surely less likely than under our system where the corresponding jobs are labeled 'non-power freaks need not apply.”

“Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism would be much more peaceful than our present system is by analogy. Consider our world as it would be if the cost of moving from one country to another were zero. Everyone lives in a housetrailer and speaks the same language. One day, the president of France announces that because of troubles with neighboring countries, new military taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly. The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a peaceful but empty landscape, the population having been reduced to himself, three generals, and twenty-seven war correspondents.”

“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.”

“An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same way that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.”

“If we want to be honest, we can ship the Statue of Liberty back to France or replace the outdated verse with new lines, "America the closed preserve/ That dirty foreigners don't deserve."”

“The tendency to be rational is the consistent and hence predictable element in human behavior.”

“Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that people have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them.”