Proposals for Liberalization

This list looks a lot like Milton Friedman's in "Capitalism and Freedom."

This is why I love Mason.

Hi, Scott W. You said:

This list looks a lot like Milton Friedman's in "Capitalism and Freedom."

I'm looking at Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom but not finding the list you refer to.

Do you have a page number or other reference?

I would vote for eliminating the Departments of Energy, Education and HUD and the Small Business Administrion.

Russ Roberts relayed that the page Scott W. may be referring to is at the end of Chapter II. of Capitalism and Freedom, 1962, U. of Chicago Press, pp. 34-36. It reads as follows:

Yet it is also true that a government would have clearly limited functions and would refrain from a host of activities that are now undertaken by federal and state governments in the United States and their counterparts in other Western countries. Succeeding chapters will deal in some detail... but it may help to give a sense of proportion about the role that a liberal would assign government, simply to list, in closing this chapter, some activities currently undertaken by governments in the U.S., that cannot, so far as I can see, validly be justified in terms of the principles outlined above:

1. Parity price support programs for agriculture.

2. Tariffs on imports or restrictions on exports, such as current oil export quotas, sugar quotas, etc.

3. Governmental control of output, such as through the farm program, or through prorationing of oil as is done by the Texas Railroad Commission.

4. Rent control, such as is still practiced in New York, or more general price and wage controls as were imposed during and just after World War II.

5. Legal minimum wages, or legal maximum prices....

6. Detailed regulation of industry...

7. A similar example, but one which deserves special mention because of its implicit censorship and violation of free speech, is the control of radio and television by the Federal Communications Commission.

8. Present social security programs...

9. Licensure provisions in various cities and states....

10. So-called "public housing" ....

11. Conscription ....

12. National Parks ....

13. The legal prohibition of carrying mail for profit.

14. Publicly owned and operated toll roads....

This list is far from comprehensive.

I think Friedman's list and ideas were a tremendous influence on current thought, but the route of that influence may have been via face-to-face communication and word of mouth rather than that exact published list.

Interesting that neither property rights nor freedom of commercial speech are mentioned.

It would be most useful to discover why things like the softwood lumber dispute exist before we tackle larger problems such as agricultural subsidies and then medicare.

The canadian/american softwood lumber dispute rewards a tiny lobby with punishing tariffs on canadian lumber, raising the operating costs of housing and other fields that rely on inexpensive lumber. Its fairly obvious to see how the politics of social security are self-perpetuating on ignorance and fear, but I can't see at all how the softwood lumber dispute has gone on with the electorate being apathetic about it and much larger lobbies (construction and housing) bearing significant costs.

Given the size of the trade deficit, it is hard to believe there are significant tariffs and quotas left. Any data would be appreciated.

On agriculture would country of origin labels be feasible? I'm not sure I want to buy food from Iran or North Korea.

Limiting the discussion to federal spending is annoying. My wife is a professor at a private university, and I might be able to consume at a higher level if she weren't competing against subsidized state universities

It would be nice if someone would link a list like this with relevant supporting research references!

Why is Medicare/Medicaid not in the privatization list? I would also like to see welfare in there, though I appreciate the "all job training and workforce assistance programs" bit.

These should be permanent lists that we refer to every year before compiling the budget, each time moving closer to completely privatizing and liberalizing these areas before allocating any taxpayer money to any area.