Frases de Milton Friedman

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“Hay una cortina de humo detrás de cada programa de gobierno.”

“La causa de la libre empresa, de la competencia, es la única que puede mantener a los capitalistas alejados de tener un poder excesivo. Hay un viejo dicho que reza: "si quieres cazar a un ladrón, llama a otro para que lo atrape". La virtud del capitalismo de libre empresa es aquél que coloca a un empresario frente a otro, y ese es el método más efectivo de control.”

“Mucha gente quiere que el gobierno proteja a los consumidores. Un problema mucho más urgente es proteger a los consumidores del gobierno.”

“Uno de los más grandes errores es juzgar a las políticas y programas por sus intenciones, en lugar de por sus resultados.”

“Nada es tan permanente como un programa temporal del gobierno.”

“Mucha gente se queja del despilfarro público, pero yo lo doy por bueno, por dos razones. En primer lugar la eficiencia no es nada deseable si alguien está haciendo algo malo. El Gobierno hace cosas que no queremos que haga, de modo que cuando más dinero despilfarre, mejor. En segundo lugar, el despilfarro lleva a los hogares de la gente el hecho de que el Gobierno no es un instrumento eficiente y efectivo para conseguir sus objetivos. Una de mis esperanzas es la desilusión creciente con la idea de que el Gobierno es ese hermano mayor siempre sabio, todopoderoso, que puede resolver cualquier problema que salte en el camino.”

“Hay muchas variantes del liberalismo. Hay un liberalismo de gobierno cero; anarquista. Hay un liberalismo de gobierno limitado. Comparten un montón en términos de sus valores fundamentales. Si los llevas hasta sus últimos términos, son diferentes. No parece importar en la práctica, porque ambos queremos trabajar en la misma dirección.”

“El poder centralizado no se vuelve inofensivo por las buenas intenciones de quienes lo crearon.”

“Sólo el gobierno es capaz de coger un papel perfectamente bueno, cubrirlo con tinta perfectamente buena y hacer una combinación absolutamente banal.”

“Una fuente mayor de objeciones a la economía libre es precisamente que […] da a la gente lo que quiere, en vez de lo que un grupo particular piensa que debería querer. Subyacente a la mayoría de los argumentos contra el mercado libre existe una falta de fe en la libertad misma.”

“Cualquier amigo de la libertad ha de revolverse como lo hago yo contra la perspectiva de convertir a los Estados Unidos en un campo armado, por la visión de las cárceles repletas por consumidores de drogas y por un ejército de burócratas con el poder de invadir la libertad de los ciudadanos, basándose en una evidencia somera.”

“Aunque necesario para la libertad, el capitalismo sólo no es suficiente para garantizarla. Tiene que estar acompañado por un conjunto de valores y de instituciones políticas favorables a la libertad.”

“El hombre libre no se pregunta ni qué puede hacer su país por él, ni qué puede hacer él por su país.”

“Los grandes avances de la civilización, ya sean en arquitectura o pintura, en ciencia o literatura, jamás han venido de un gobierno central.”

“La responsabilidad social de los negocios consiste en incrementar sus beneficios.”

“Los gobiernos no aprenden jamás. Las personas sí lo hacen.”

“está usted equivocado, a no ser que se refiera a la historia de EU del siglo pasado y la primera parte de este siglo. Desde 1933 EU ha ido en la dirección que México llevó a sus extremos. En estos momentos el Estado dispone de más del 50% del ingreso nacional a través de programas, regulaciones, mandatos, etc., el mejor ejemplo para ustedes es el Hong Kong de los últimos 30 años.”

“El salario mínimo impide a muchas personas obtener un empleo.”

“Lo que importa no es la inflación per se, sino la inflación no anticipada”

“Colón no buscó una nueva ruta a las Indias en respuesta a una directiva elegida mayoritariamente.”

“Es una suerte que la sociedad libre sea más productiva, porque de no haberlo sido jamás se habría tolerado. El prejuicio en su contra es tan poderoso que es necesario tener una ventaja de cinco a uno para vencerlo.”

“Siempre se ha argüido que el problema del capitalismo es que es materialista, mientras que el colectivismo puede permitirse prestar atención a lo no material. Pero la experiencia ha sido exactamente la contraria. No hay sociedades que hayan enfatizado los requisitos materiales del bienestar como las colectivistas. Son las sociedades libres las que, de lejos, han permitido un mayor desarrollo a los aspectos inmateriales, espirituales, artísticos del bienestar.”

“Por supuesto, la existencia de un mercado libre no elimina la necesidad de un gobierno. Por el contrario, como hemos dicho, el gobierno es esencial como foro para determinar “las reglas del juego” y como árbitro para aplicar las reglas que se decidan.”

“Estoy a favor de bajar los impuestos bajo cualquier circunstancia, por cualquier excusa y por cualquier razón, siempre que sea posible.”

“La inflación es un impuesto sin legislación.”

“La solución gubernamental a un problema es normalmente tan mala como el mismo problema.”

“La cantidad de dinero, precios y producción fueron definitivamente más inestables después de implantar el Sistema de la Reserva Federal.”

“«La vida no es justa. es tentador creer que el gobierno puede corregir lo que la naturaleza ha generado.”

“Los almuerzos gratis no existen.”

“Si un intercambio entre dos partes es voluntario, no tendrá lugar a menos que ambas partes crean que se beneficiarán de él. La mayoría de las falacias económicas derivan del perder de vista esta simple reflexión.”

“Tenemos un sistema que cobra cada vez más impuestos al trabajo y subsidia el no trabajar.”

“Los verdaderos impuestos al pueblo no son lo que usted llama impuestos, son los gastos públicos totales. Si el congreso gasta más dinero del que le entra, si el gobierno gasta todo ese dinero, ¿quién cree usted que lo está pagando? Santa Claus no lo está pagando, un hada no lo está pagando… usted y yo, como contribuyentes, lo estamos pagando indirectamente a través de la tributación oculta, y por eso el punto crucial es reducir los gastos totales del gobierno.”

“En los únicos casos en los que las masas se han escapado de la clase de miseria absoluta que estás hablando, los únicos casos registrados en la historia, son donde se ha tenido capitalismo y en gran parte libre comercio. Si quieres saber donde las masas están en peor situación, peores condiciones, es exactamente en el tipo de sociedades que se apartan de eso. De modo que el registro de la historia es absolutamente cristalina, que no existe una forma alternativa hasta ahora descubierta de mejorar la situación de las personas comunes y corrientes que pueden sostener una vela a las actividades productivas que se desencadenan por el sistema de libre empresa.”

“Nadie gasta el dinero de otra persona tan cuidadosamente como gasta el suyo. Nadie usa los recursos de otra persona con tanto cuidado como utiliza los suyos. Así que si quieres la eficiencia y la eficacia, si desea que el conocimiento sea utilizado apropiadamente, usted tiene que hacerlo a través de los medios de propiedad privada.”

“Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it and doesn’t just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can’t really afford to eliminate it—not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. So the answer is to allow only pollution that’s worth what it costs, and not any pollution that isn’t worth what it costs.”

“The essence of the problem is that once we begin to allow exceptions for special interests, we move from a system of private arrangements to a political system where everyone’s freedom is limited and government becomes a matter of trying to balance those interests. Nobody really wins under these terms.”

“We want the kind of world in which greedy people can do the least harm to their fellow men. That’s the kind of world in which power is widely dispersed and each of us has as many alternatives as possible.”

“What kind of society isn’t structured on greed?… So the problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm. It seems to me that the great virtue of capitalism is that it’s that kind of system. Because under capitalism, the power of any one individual over his fellow man is relatively small.”

“The draft is inequitable because irrelevant considerations play so large a role in determining who serves. It is wasteful because deferment of students, fathers, and married men jams colleges, raises the birth rate, and fuels divorce court. It is inconsistent with a free society because it exacts compulsory service from some and limits the freedom of others to travel abroad, emigrate, or even to talk and act freely. So long as compulsion is retained, these defects are inevitable.”

“The old saw is that the Quakers went to the New World to do good and ended up doing well. Today, well-meaning reformers go to Washington to do good and end up doing harm.”

“A military draft is undesirable and unnecessary. We can and should man our armed forces with volunteers—as the United States has traditionally done except in major wars.”

“Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist.”

“Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. This is a fundamentally subversive doctrine. If businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders, how are they to know what it is? Can self-selected private individuals decide what the social interest is? Can they decide how great a burden they are justified in placing on themselves or their stockholders to serve that social interest?”

“Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.”

“Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.”

“The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom.”

“As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals.”

“By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.”

“The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.”

“The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. … Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action.”

“The Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society.”

“The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.”

“Thank heaven that we don’t get all of the government that we are made to pay for.”

“After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.”

“The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.”

“You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others. And what ultimately happens when you aim for equality is that A and B decide what C should do for D, except that they take a bit of commission off on the way.”

“In my opinion, a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. A society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.”

“If you look at every program that the government has adopted in the direction of extending its scope, it took an enormous propaganda campaign by special propaganda groups to get those measures passed. There was no underlining public demand for those measures. On the contrary, the demand had to be created, it had to be developed, it had to be produced. And it was created, it was developed, it was produced, by people… who sincerely wanted to see an expansion in the scope of government.”

“Will we read next that government control of prices has created a shortage of sand in the Sahara?”

“That is a widespread myth, that it is possible to spend money with nobody paying for it. You have everybody screaming that we ought to have new, bigger, more generous government programs. Where are we going to raise the money? Tax business. But business corporations can’t pay any taxes. A corporate executive may sign the check, but where does he get the money? From his stockholders or from his customers or from his employees. Unlike the federal government, he doesn’t have a printing press in his basement. So the only way he can pay money to the government is imposing a burden on somebody. Government cannot spend money at nobody’s expense.”

“This leads to my next myth—the myth that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. What was really involved in that last story was that somehow the local people do not pay out the money coming down from Washington somebody else does. Of course, the truth is that the money makes a round trip between Florida and Washington, and there is a discount taken off for cash as it passes through Washington. Some of you may remember that wonderful description of government by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said that government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else.”

“The elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement. It was not produced by the failure of private enterprise, it was produced by the failure of government to perform a function which had been assigned to it.”

“I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely far‐sighted and clear‐headed in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly short sighted and muddle‐headed in mat ters [sic!] that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of business in general. This short sightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or incomes policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally controlled system than effective governmental control of prices and wages. The short‐sightedness is also exemplified in speeches by business men on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the ptirsuit [sic!] of profits is wicked and im moral [sic!] and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, business men seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.”