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'''Milton Friedman''' (1912–2006) was an American economist at the University of Chicago, leader of the monetarist counter-revolution, Nobel laureate (1976), and the most influential propagandist of free-market capitalism in the late 20th century.
'''Milton Friedman''' the Chicago School's popularizer of market absolutism — appears in Infrared discourse as the pseudoscientific turn after Marx, and, ironically, as an accidental witness for planning.


== Doctrines ==
== From the streams ==
* Monetarism: inflation is "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon"; central banks should target money supply, not employment.
* The pencil argument inverted ([https://infrared-transcripts.pages.dev/en/kick/infrared/5e76e0d7-c4cc-459e-b8b1-65ade98827ae/ MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE]): "I know Milton Friedman is cringe, but he was kind of right about something the pencil is made of materials whose origin is so vast in scale... you could say you don't need centralization, but objectively you do. Objectively these supply chains have to all come together somehow from very disparate origins." Friedman's famous parable of spontaneous market coordination actually demonstrates the '''pre-existing centralized coordination of the world economy''' — the very thing socialism would make conscious.
* Permanent income hypothesis; natural rate of unemployment attacking Keynesian demand management.
* The school's role ([https://infrared-transcripts.pages.dev/en/kick/infrared/78727f1b-bfd6-49fc-863e-bf67603855f7/ MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE]): after Marx brought classical political economy to its conclusion, "the bourgeoisie needed a more subjectivist, pseudoscientific economic science" — Hayek and Friedman as the replacement crew, trading value theory for preference talk.
* ''Capitalism and Freedom'' (1962) and ''Free to Choose'' (1980): competitive capitalism as necessary for political freedom; school vouchers, floating exchange rates, volunteer army, negative income tax.
* "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits" (1970).


## Practice
== See also ==
Chicago Boys trained under Friedman's department advised Pinochet's Chile (the "Miracle of Chile"), and shock-therapy regimes worldwide — the pattern Naomi Klein called "disaster capitalism": crisis as window for marketization.
* [[Friedrich August Hayek]]
 
* [[Economic Calculation Problem]]
== Critique ==
Monetarism collapsed empirically (money-demand instability in the 1980s); its legacy survives as central-bank inflation targeting. For the left, Friedman represents the friendly face of class war from above — see also [[Murray N. Rothbard]], [[Hans Hermann-Hoppe]] for the radicalized lineage.


== References ==
== References ==
<references/>
<references/>


[[Category:Economics]][[Category:Chicago School]]
[[Category:Economics]][[Category:People]][[Category:American politics]]

Revision as of 09:58, 21 August 2026

Milton Friedman — the Chicago School's popularizer of market absolutism — appears in Infrared discourse as the pseudoscientific turn after Marx, and, ironically, as an accidental witness for planning.

From the streams

  • The pencil argument inverted (MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE): "I know Milton Friedman is cringe, but he was kind of right about something — the pencil is made of materials whose origin is so vast in scale... you could say you don't need centralization, but objectively you do. Objectively these supply chains have to all come together somehow from very disparate origins." Friedman's famous parable of spontaneous market coordination actually demonstrates the pre-existing centralized coordination of the world economy — the very thing socialism would make conscious.
  • The school's role (MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE): after Marx brought classical political economy to its conclusion, "the bourgeoisie needed a more subjectivist, pseudoscientific economic science" — Hayek and Friedman as the replacement crew, trading value theory for preference talk.

See also

References