Tape 2 - untitled
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- | Hello, Instructional Dynamics Incorporated | 0:02 |
welcomes you to this weekly series of commentaries | 0:04 | |
on the current economic scene. | 0:07 | |
Reporting to you | 0:09 | |
will be one of the nation's leading economists, | 0:10 | |
Professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. | 0:12 | |
- | As I mentioned at the end of my tape last week | 0:16 |
I plan to spend most of this tape | 0:19 | |
on discussing the consequences of the election. | 0:22 | |
Like most of you, I am sure, | 0:26 | |
I lost a good deal of sleep this week | 0:28 | |
trying to stay with the newscasters | 0:31 | |
in the course of that tortuous and long, drawn-out contest. | 0:35 | |
I am delighted that it came out as it did, | 0:40 | |
that Mister Nixon is now our president-elect, | 0:43 | |
and will be in the White House after January. | 0:46 | |
I personally believe that his election augurs well | 0:50 | |
for the future of the country. | 0:53 | |
But before discussing this election, | 0:56 | |
I would like to comment briefly on a point that came up | 0:59 | |
in the course of Professor Samuelson's companion tape | 1:03 | |
in the series last week. | 1:07 | |
Professor Samuelson referred to the fact | 1:09 | |
that GNP growth decelerated slightly | 1:13 | |
in the third quarter of 1968. | 1:17 | |
He said that, | 1:22 | |
with respect to the explanation of this development, | 1:23 | |
he was inclined, himself, to be an eclectic, | 1:26 | |
to be a person who gave weight | 1:29 | |
both to the monetary forces and to the fiscal policy effect. | 1:31 | |
He therefore attributed | 1:36 | |
the slight slowing down in the third quarter | 1:38 | |
to the effect of the passage of the surcharge, | 1:41 | |
while emphasizing that the effect had been much less | 1:44 | |
than most people had anticipated. | 1:48 | |
What I want to point out | 1:50 | |
is that the forces I mentioned in my tape last week | 1:52 | |
can adequately account for that slowdown | 1:56 | |
in the third quarter of 1968. | 1:58 | |
I mentioned last week | 2:01 | |
that from November of 1967 to April of 1968, | 2:02 | |
the Federal Reserve did follow | 2:07 | |
a somewhat tighter money policy. | 2:08 | |
That is to say, | 2:11 | |
they increased the quantity of money at a slower rate | 2:11 | |
than they did before or than they have since. | 2:14 | |
It takes about six months or more | 2:17 | |
for these changes to have their effect. | 2:19 | |
The slowdown in the third quarter, it was very slight. | 2:21 | |
Professor Samuelson mentioned a GNP growth | 2:25 | |
of $18 billion a year | 2:27 | |
instead of about $21 billion a year | 2:29 | |
in the second and first quarters. | 2:31 | |
That slowdown might very well, | 2:33 | |
and probably can be explained by | 2:35 | |
the prior slowdown in the rate of monetary growth. | 2:40 | |
There is no need | 2:44 | |
to call into the picture the fiscal effects. | 2:45 | |
Indeed, you will recall that Professor Samuelson | 2:49 | |
referred to estimates made by persons at two banks, | 2:51 | |
one in Chicago and one in New York. | 2:54 | |
I'm sure that without fear of successful contradiction, | 2:56 | |
I know who the people he called are, | 2:59 | |
because they happened, both, to be students of mine. | 3:00 | |
He referred to their having predicted a slowdown | 3:03 | |
in the third quarter. | 3:06 | |
Their prediction did not depend | 3:07 | |
on giving any weight to fiscal effects. | 3:09 | |
It depended entirely on the earlier slowdown | 3:10 | |
in the rate of monetary growth. | 3:14 | |
With this off my chest, | 3:16 | |
let me turn to the more important question | 3:17 | |
of the effect of the election of a new president. | 3:19 | |
This is such a big topic, we'll refer to so many items, | 3:24 | |
that I'm rather sure it will not be possible for me, | 3:28 | |
in one tape today, | 3:30 | |
to get through all of the items I would like to talk about, | 3:32 | |
but let me, at any rate, | 3:35 | |
outline in broad terms the various topics | 3:37 | |
that it seems to me worth discussing in this connection, | 3:40 | |
and that I have some ideas about. | 3:43 | |
First, I would like to talk about, | 3:48 | |
on the broadest level, | 3:53 | |
the widespread tendency to misconceive the kind of effect | 3:54 | |
that the election of a new president has. | 3:57 | |
The tendency is to look at it in terms of radical changes | 4:00 | |
rather than in terms of what I shall argue | 4:03 | |
is much more important: | 4:06 | |
the slight change in direction which it may portend. | 4:07 | |
Secondly, still as background to a discussion | 4:12 | |
of the strictly economic effects of the election, | 4:16 | |
it seems to me worth saying a few words | 4:19 | |
about the broader consequences of the election, | 4:22 | |
not entirely non-economic, | 4:26 | |
or not entirely without implications for the economy, | 4:29 | |
the broader consequences on such matters as law and order, | 4:33 | |
cohesiveness in the population, | 4:38 | |
the use of violence, and so on, | 4:40 | |
because I believe that there is a very close relationship, | 4:42 | |
and a very important relationship | 4:46 | |
between the kind of governmental | 4:47 | |
and economic policies followed, on the one hand, | 4:49 | |
and the attitudes about these other matters | 4:52 | |
in the country at large, on the other. | 4:55 | |
Passing from these background matters, | 4:57 | |
we come to the major economic problems. | 4:59 | |
The major economic problems for this administration | 5:02 | |
for the coming year, | 5:05 | |
and they are the same as the problems | 5:07 | |
that would have faced Mr. Humphrey had he been elected, | 5:08 | |
are clearly threefold: the problem of inflation, | 5:12 | |
how to control it, how to keep it from getting out of hand, | 5:16 | |
how to bring it down to a lower level | 5:19 | |
without introducing unacceptable levels of unemployment. | 5:21 | |
Next, the problem of the balance of payments: | 5:25 | |
how we can check the tendency | 5:28 | |
that has persisted for many years now | 5:31 | |
for our foreign payments to exceed our foreign receipts | 5:34 | |
for there to be pressure on the dollar. | 5:38 | |
And, as the third of these main economic problems, | 5:41 | |
how to get control of the government budget: | 5:44 | |
how to achieve the objectives which Mr. Nixon has expressed, | 5:47 | |
of keeping government expenditures from rising, | 5:51 | |
of bringing down taxes, | 5:53 | |
and yet at the same time | 5:55 | |
keeping taxes in line with expenditures. | 5:56 | |
These are the main topics I would like to comment on. | 5:59 | |
I will go as far as I can today, | 6:03 | |
and then I will take up where I leave off today | 6:05 | |
on my next tape. | 6:07 | |
Let me turn to the first topic mentioned: | 6:11 | |
what kind of an effect, in very broad terms, | 6:15 | |
the election of a new president will make. | 6:18 | |
Let me go back and cite the example | 6:21 | |
of the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. | 6:23 | |
If you look at what Roosevelt said in his campaign speeches, | 6:27 | |
his policy was identical with that of Hoover's. | 6:31 | |
Indeed, he berated Hoover in the course of the campaign | 6:35 | |
for being so profligate with the government's money. | 6:40 | |
He called Hoover irresponsible because of the large deficits | 6:44 | |
that had emerged in the past years, | 6:47 | |
and he promised that the new Democratic administration | 6:49 | |
would inaugurate a period of fiscal responsibility. | 6:52 | |
True, after he got elected | 6:56 | |
there was a very great spate of legislation. | 6:58 | |
The first hundred days saw many items enacted | 7:01 | |
which have remained with us. | 7:06 | |
But if you ask yourself, what was the major effect | 7:08 | |
of the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, | 7:11 | |
I do not believe that you will find | 7:13 | |
that that major effect comes | 7:14 | |
from the laws which were passed in the first hundred days, | 7:16 | |
or indeed from the laws that were passed | 7:19 | |
in the whole first four years of his administration. | 7:20 | |
The effect of FDR's election | 7:24 | |
has to be sought in a very different direction. | 7:25 | |
His election started a new trend, a new tendency, | 7:28 | |
a different path for general government policy, | 7:32 | |
a different attitude toward economic arrangements. | 7:37 | |
There had, of course, earlier than this, been many cases | 7:41 | |
in which the government had interfered with the economy, | 7:44 | |
had stepped in to control one thing or another, | 7:46 | |
but there had been a general philosophy prior to this, | 7:49 | |
of free enterprise and laissez-faire, | 7:54 | |
that the government's role was to be in the background, | 7:56 | |
to provide a framework, | 8:00 | |
that it did not have the role of running the economy. | 8:03 | |
The most extreme expression of this goes back still earlier. | 8:07 | |
You may recall a statement by President Grover Cleveland | 8:10 | |
at an earlier date | 8:14 | |
that the government has no business supporting the people. | 8:17 | |
That it is the business of the people | 8:21 | |
to support the government. | 8:23 | |
Now, that was a view which was as widely different | 8:24 | |
from the view that has developed by now | 8:28 | |
as one can possibly imagine. | 8:29 | |
The thing about the Roosevelt administration | 8:35 | |
was that this shift in emphasis, | 8:38 | |
which in the early days had only a minor effect | 8:39 | |
on the course of the economy, | 8:43 | |
on the structure of the society, on everything else, | 8:45 | |
in the course of 35 years | 8:48 | |
has accumulated to an enormous difference. | 8:50 | |
It has accumulated to the point | 8:52 | |
where the government now plays a role in the economy | 8:54 | |
that would have been unthinkable, | 8:56 | |
even to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, | 8:58 | |
let alone to any of his predecessors | 9:00 | |
during the prior decades. | 9:02 | |
This is a very, very general proposition. | 9:07 | |
Start two lines diverging at a very, very slight amount, | 9:10 | |
continue them far enough, | 9:14 | |
and sooner or later they will be very far apart. | 9:16 | |
So, the effect of FDR | 9:18 | |
was to start the line of government policy | 9:20 | |
diverging from where it had been | 9:23 | |
and over 35 years it had accumulated. | 9:24 | |
In exactly the same way, | 9:27 | |
the tendency on Nixon's election | 9:28 | |
is to look at the dramatic, radical things | 9:30 | |
that he is going to do. | 9:32 | |
That seems, to me, to be the wrong thing to look at. | 9:33 | |
The thing you wanna look at | 9:36 | |
if you wanna know what's going to happen | 9:37 | |
over the course of decades | 9:39 | |
is look at whether Richard Nixon will be successful | 9:40 | |
in instilling a new direction to policy, | 9:45 | |
whether he can start things going off | 9:48 | |
at a slightly different angle. | 9:50 | |
The very fact that it was he who was elected | 9:53 | |
reflects, to some extent, a dissatisfaction | 9:55 | |
on the part of the public at large | 9:58 | |
with the direction in which policy had been going, | 10:00 | |
a great dissatisfaction | 10:03 | |
with centralization of government in Washington, | 10:05 | |
a dissatisfaction | 10:08 | |
with the paternalistic attitude on the part of government, | 10:09 | |
with government handouts, government controls, | 10:12 | |
government regulations. | 10:15 | |
Mr. Nixon, time and again, expressed the sentiment, | 10:18 | |
and there is no doubt | 10:21 | |
that this corresponds to his basic underlying views, | 10:21 | |
that the strength of America lay in its people, | 10:25 | |
and that the strength of America | 10:28 | |
lay in the freedom of individuals | 10:29 | |
to pursue their own destinies | 10:32 | |
with government, perhaps, lending a helping hand, | 10:33 | |
but not taking things over | 10:35 | |
and running the lives of people for them. | 10:37 | |
There is no doubt | 10:40 | |
that he will make every effort that he possibly can | 10:41 | |
to move things in a different direction. | 10:44 | |
He will make every effort | 10:46 | |
to reduce the extent to which government exerts control | 10:48 | |
over individuals, over business community, | 10:50 | |
over various groups. | 10:53 | |
You will recall his letter on the stock exchange | 10:55 | |
that appeared during the campaign | 10:57 | |
and caused so much discussion. | 10:58 | |
This reflected the general philosophy I am speaking of. | 11:00 | |
There is no doubt that he will try his best | 11:03 | |
to turn control of matters from the central government | 11:06 | |
over to state and local governments, to decentralize. | 11:10 | |
He will try to emphasize the idea | 11:14 | |
of individual responsibility | 11:17 | |
as opposed to social responsibility. | 11:19 | |
In my opinion, it is in this direction | 11:23 | |
that the major effect of his administration is to be found. | 11:25 | |
If he succeeds in starting a new trend, | 11:29 | |
in getting things moving off | 11:32 | |
in a slightly different direction, | 11:35 | |
then, in the course of decades, | 11:39 | |
that will accumulate and make a major difference | 11:42 | |
in the structure of the society. | 11:44 | |
This comment ties in very closely with my second point, | 11:47 | |
which has to do with the relation | 11:51 | |
between this general attitude | 11:53 | |
about the role of the government, | 11:54 | |
the relation between economic policies, broadly conceived, | 11:56 | |
and such matters as appear not to be economic, | 12:01 | |
as the law and order in the community, | 12:05 | |
the extent of violence, | 12:09 | |
of crime, and things like that. | 12:12 | |
Now, obviously, very many things come in | 12:15 | |
to affect these matters. | 12:17 | |
Crime has been with us for a very long time. | 12:19 | |
It's not a new thing | 12:22 | |
that aggrieved wives should murder their husbands | 12:23 | |
or vice versa. | 12:27 | |
It's not a new thing | 12:28 | |
that there should be violence and riots on the streets. | 12:29 | |
During the Civil War in the United States | 12:31 | |
you had draft riots in New York | 12:33 | |
that exceeded anything we have seen in recent years. | 12:35 | |
So that I don't mean to say | 12:38 | |
that the points I'm going to mention | 12:40 | |
comprise all of the factors that affect the disgraceful | 12:44 | |
developments that have occurred in this country, | 12:50 | |
the disgraceful rise of violence and of crime, | 12:52 | |
and a lack of respect for the law, | 12:54 | |
but I do believe that one of the major factors | 12:56 | |
that has produced this tendency | 13:01 | |
has been the widespread substitution | 13:04 | |
of political mechanisms of solving problems | 13:07 | |
for market mechanisms, | 13:10 | |
of governmental arrangements for private arrangements. | 13:12 | |
This tendency to use political mechanisms | 13:17 | |
in place of market mechanisms | 13:20 | |
affects the climate of law and order, | 13:23 | |
affects the use of violence | 13:25 | |
in quite a number of different respects. | 13:27 | |
One very obvious effect is that as soon as government | 13:29 | |
starts doing a great many different things, | 13:33 | |
this diverts the energies | 13:36 | |
and the attentions of government officials | 13:37 | |
from the things that are the proper function of government. | 13:39 | |
One reason why police matters and things of this sort | 13:42 | |
have been neglected | 13:46 | |
is because the glamorous things to do in government | 13:47 | |
are in Washington. | 13:50 | |
The glamorous things to do | 13:51 | |
are in the area of economic and social control, | 13:52 | |
not in the area of setting up a good, efficient, | 13:55 | |
first-rate police force and directing it, | 13:58 | |
and the really able people | 14:01 | |
tend to have their ambitions centered in Washington, | 14:03 | |
not on the local scene. | 14:05 | |
The second factor | 14:07 | |
that has worked in the direction of decline of law and order | 14:11 | |
and a rise of violence | 14:14 | |
is the point I mentioned earlier: | 14:16 | |
the growing acceptance of the idea of social responsibility, | 14:18 | |
as opposed to individual responsibility, | 14:21 | |
the growing acceptance of the idea | 14:24 | |
that if there is anything wrong | 14:25 | |
with the life of an individual, | 14:26 | |
that's to be found in the social conditions | 14:28 | |
which underlay it. | 14:30 | |
If indeed society is responsible for what happens to us, | 14:32 | |
if society is responsible for the fact | 14:36 | |
that the poor people in the slums are poor, | 14:39 | |
that a Negro is discriminated against, | 14:41 | |
if each individual gets to feel | 14:44 | |
that the reason he's in a bad way | 14:46 | |
is not because he didn't work hard, | 14:48 | |
not because he's indolent, not because he may not be smart, | 14:50 | |
but because some bad people | 14:53 | |
have been discriminating against him, | 14:55 | |
and have been taking his things away, | 14:56 | |
why then who can blame him if he turns around and says, | 14:58 | |
well, they did it to me; I'm gonna do it to them, | 15:01 | |
and I think that a not-negligible share of the blame | 15:04 | |
for the kind of developments in the slums that you have had | 15:08 | |
has been the widespread acceptance, | 15:11 | |
on every level of our society, | 15:13 | |
from the lowest to the highest, | 15:14 | |
of the doctrine that society is responsible | 15:15 | |
for the ills of individual, | 15:18 | |
rather than that individuals are themselves responsible. | 15:20 | |
Another way | 15:26 | |
in which the substitution of political for market mechanisms | 15:28 | |
affect these matters | 15:31 | |
is that it increases the amount of discontent. | 15:32 | |
When people satisfy their needs in the marketplace, | 15:37 | |
each person separately can get what he wants. | 15:42 | |
If you and I and our neighbors buy automobiles, | 15:45 | |
one of you may buy a Chevrolet, another a Ford, | 15:49 | |
and each one picks his own model. | 15:51 | |
When we buy ties, | 15:53 | |
each person can buy the color of tie he wants. | 15:54 | |
That's the characteristic feature of the market process. | 15:57 | |
It's a process of proportional representation | 16:00 | |
in which every voter who votes with a dollar | 16:02 | |
gets whatever it is he voted for. | 16:05 | |
The political mechanism is in sharp contrast. | 16:08 | |
In the political mechanism, | 16:11 | |
we tend, as a characteristic matter, to have a vote. | 16:13 | |
If 51% of the people vote one way, | 16:16 | |
and 49% of the people vote the other way, | 16:18 | |
then everybody gets what the 51% of the people voted for, | 16:21 | |
which means that 49% of the people | 16:24 | |
do not get what they want. | 16:27 | |
If we were to distribute automobiles or ties | 16:29 | |
by the political mechanism, | 16:33 | |
we would have a vote to decide whether there should be, | 16:35 | |
whether all cars should be Cadillacs, | 16:38 | |
or all cars Fords, or all cars Chevrolets, | 16:40 | |
and then everybody would have to get | 16:44 | |
whatever the vote was for. | 16:45 | |
If we were to distribute ties, we'd have to vote | 16:47 | |
what percentage of red ties, blue ties, and green ties, | 16:50 | |
and then everybody would have to conform with that decision, | 16:53 | |
regardless of what his own views were. | 16:56 | |
Now, there are some matters where it's unavoidable | 16:59 | |
to use a political mechanism of this kind. | 17:01 | |
Unfortunately, there is no way in God's green Earth | 17:04 | |
whereby one man can have the United States | 17:07 | |
fighting in Vietnam, | 17:10 | |
and another man can have the United States | 17:11 | |
not fighting in Vietnam. | 17:13 | |
For such issues, | 17:14 | |
the economist calls them indivisible choices, | 17:16 | |
it's necessary to use a political mechanism. | 17:20 | |
We haven't been able to devise any way | 17:24 | |
to use a market mechanism. | 17:27 | |
But whenever you extend the area of | 17:29 | |
governance of the political mechanism, | 17:34 | |
you extend, just by that much, | 17:36 | |
the area over which people are going to be discontented, | 17:38 | |
and one of the major effects | 17:41 | |
of the extension of governmental controls | 17:44 | |
over the past three decades has been to widen the area | 17:46 | |
with respect to which people feel | 17:51 | |
that they are not getting what they want, | 17:53 | |
so that the widespread use of the political mechanism | 17:57 | |
has increased the amount of discontent in the society. | 18:00 | |
The use of the political mechanism | 18:05 | |
not only increases the amount of discontent, | 18:07 | |
but it directs the discontent at persons. | 18:10 | |
If a Robinson Crusoe on an island | 18:14 | |
is not getting a very large income, | 18:17 | |
if his crops aren't very large, | 18:20 | |
he doesn't blame that on anybody else. | 18:23 | |
It's impossible. | 18:25 | |
He may rail at God for having put him off | 18:26 | |
on such a miserable, low-quality island, | 18:30 | |
but he has no other individual or person to blame. | 18:33 | |
Similarly, in a really free enterprise market mechanism, | 18:37 | |
if one man does not do well, | 18:41 | |
if he does not have a high income, | 18:44 | |
he has nobody to blame, as it were, | 18:47 | |
but himself or the fates. | 18:49 | |
The fates did not give him a sufficient skill, | 18:51 | |
sufficient ability to be able to extract a high income | 18:56 | |
from the marketplace. | 18:59 | |
The market takes the place of the environment | 19:01 | |
of Robinson Crusoe. | 19:05 | |
He recognizes that scarcity is what's at work | 19:07 | |
in keeping him from having a high income. | 19:11 | |
On the other hand, | 19:14 | |
as you increasingly use political mechanisms | 19:15 | |
to distribute and produce goods, | 19:18 | |
this discontent is directed, | 19:20 | |
not at fate, but at people. | 19:22 | |
If all that is necessary to improve my lot is to pass a law, | 19:26 | |
why then obviously, the bad, evil, greedy people | 19:31 | |
who refuse to pass the law that would have benefited me | 19:35 | |
are the people who are to blame for my condition, | 19:37 | |
and not the fact that nature is niggardly. | 19:40 | |
Now, of course, for any particular ill | 19:43 | |
you can always pass a law. | 19:45 | |
If you or I could easily benefit ourselves, | 19:47 | |
if we can get government to pass a law for us, | 19:50 | |
but you can pass all the laws in the world, | 19:53 | |
and you cannot thereby increase the total amount of goods | 19:55 | |
that there are to go around, | 19:58 | |
so it is impossible for everybody to be satisfied, | 19:59 | |
and yet the idea that all that's needed is to pass a law | 20:02 | |
causes an increase of dissatisfaction | 20:06 | |
for the reasons I mentioned earlier, | 20:11 | |
and directs that dissatisfaction | 20:12 | |
at the particular persons who are regarded as responsible | 20:14 | |
for preventing people from getting what they want, | 20:17 | |
or what they believe would be their just desserts. | 20:21 | |
So that the use of political mechanisms | 20:26 | |
increases the amount of discontent | 20:29 | |
and directs the amount of discontent at persons, | 20:31 | |
rather than causing it to be directed | 20:33 | |
at the forces of nature | 20:35 | |
which limit the amount of the good things of life | 20:37 | |
that are available to be parceled out among all of us. | 20:40 | |
In addition, it not only directs discontent | 20:44 | |
at persons in general, | 20:49 | |
it directs discontent | 20:50 | |
at particular, named, identifiable people. | 20:52 | |
The interesting things is | 20:57 | |
how much more capable of being concentrated | 20:59 | |
political power is than economic power. | 21:02 | |
There are many people who have enormous fortunes, | 21:07 | |
but few of them have anything like the amount of control | 21:09 | |
over the lives of men in the world | 21:12 | |
as do a small number of political figures. | 21:15 | |
One of the reasons why people like myself | 21:19 | |
have always been in favor of a small role of government | 21:21 | |
and a large role for the market is precisely this reason: | 21:24 | |
that political power is subject to far greater concentration | 21:27 | |
than is economic power, | 21:30 | |
and therefore, if you resort to the market, | 21:32 | |
you produce a decentralization of power | 21:34 | |
that is likely to avoid tyranny and dictatorship. | 21:36 | |
This is illustrated dramatically in the United States. | 21:40 | |
I used this example in a Newsweek column some months ago | 21:43 | |
in the case of the Kennedy family. | 21:46 | |
Joseph Kennedy, this is a tragic case, of course, | 21:49 | |
but all the more dramatically illustrates | 21:53 | |
the point I want to make. | 21:55 | |
Joseph Kennedy accumulated an enormous fortune, | 21:57 | |
which is measured in the hundreds of millions, | 22:00 | |
yet he never had the kind of power or the kind of visibility | 22:03 | |
that caused anybody to try to take his life | 22:06 | |
or, very likely, ever gave anybody the idea of doing so, | 22:09 | |
except, of course, in personal squabbles | 22:12 | |
that he may have had with particular individuals | 22:15 | |
in the course of his many business dealings. | 22:16 | |
But here, two of this three sons | 22:19 | |
have been tragically assassinated. | 22:20 | |
Those sons, | 22:23 | |
John Kennedy, as president of the United States, | 22:26 | |
clearly had far greater power, | 22:28 | |
far greater importance over the lives of people, | 22:30 | |
than his father was every able to have | 22:32 | |
with his hundreds of millions | 22:34 | |
except, of course, insofar as those hundreds of millions | 22:35 | |
had some effect on establishing conditions | 22:38 | |
under which John F. Kennedy could be president, | 22:41 | |
and by having so much power, | 22:44 | |
and more important, by being so visible and identifiable, | 22:47 | |
he directed the forces of violence and discontent at him. | 22:51 | |
Bobby Kennedy is another example. | 22:54 | |
He was aiming for an office | 22:56 | |
which would have had the same effect, | 22:58 | |
which made him equally visible, | 23:00 | |
and this is a tragic illustration | 23:02 | |
about how the use of the political | 23:04 | |
instead of the market mechanism | 23:07 | |
will direct violence at named individuals. | 23:09 | |
Let me go back to the reason I started talking about this. | 23:12 | |
I am talking about what effect | 23:15 | |
the election of Nixon to the presidency will have. | 23:17 | |
If the election of Nixon to the presidency | 23:20 | |
can start a new trend in thinking, | 23:23 | |
can start us moving away | 23:26 | |
from emphasis on social responsibility | 23:27 | |
toward emphasis on individual responsibility, | 23:30 | |
away from assigning these tasks to the government | 23:33 | |
and toward a greater role for private individuals, | 23:36 | |
for individual freedom and for the market, | 23:40 | |
then I think it can have a dramatic effect | 23:42 | |
on the kind of society, in the broader sense, | 23:45 | |
that we can have. | 23:49 | |
It can have a dramatic effect | 23:50 | |
in eliminating the present extraordinary divisiveness | 23:52 | |
of the country, | 23:55 | |
the present emphasis on violence, on riots, | 23:57 | |
as ways of getting what people think they ought to have, | 24:01 | |
and indeed, in some ways this is, I think, | 24:06 | |
the most hopeful augury from the election of the president. | 24:08 | |
I do believe that he will try to set a tone along this line. | 24:14 | |
I am optimistic enough to believe | 24:18 | |
that he will be successful, | 24:20 | |
and I am even more optimistic | 24:21 | |
in believing that, if successful, | 24:23 | |
you will see in the next few years | 24:24 | |
a dramatic decline in discontent in the population. | 24:27 | |
Needless to say, in order not to overstate my case, | 24:30 | |
I don't mean to denigrate the importance of other factors, | 24:35 | |
and in particular, in the present circumstances, | 24:40 | |
the importance of the Vietnam War, | 24:42 | |
which has done so much to divide the nation, | 24:43 | |
but even this case exemplifies my general point. | 24:46 | |
Mr. Nixon has come out, I am delighted to say, | 24:51 | |
for instituting a voluntary army. | 24:54 | |
Vietnam would have been a far less divisive force | 24:58 | |
in our society | 25:01 | |
if the men who had been fighting in Vietnam | 25:02 | |
had been volunteers | 25:05 | |
rather than people recruited by the draft. | 25:06 | |
In some ways that's another indication of how divisive it is | 25:09 | |
to use political mechanisms instead of market mechanisms. | 25:13 | |
The war itself must be decided by political methods, | 25:16 | |
but the way in which we recruit men for the armed forces | 25:19 | |
can be either political, on the one hand, | 25:24 | |
or market, on the other. | 25:26 | |
I hope Mr. Nixon will be able to institute | 25:28 | |
his voluntary army as promptly as possible, | 25:31 | |
because I can think of no single factor | 25:35 | |
that would do more to reduce the amount of discontent | 25:37 | |
among our young, | 25:40 | |
particularly among those youngsters who are in college, | 25:41 | |
and because of a combination of idealism and self-interest | 25:44 | |
have been among the most violent and disruptive. | 25:47 | |
Nothing can do so much to defuse that situation | 25:53 | |
as the substitution of a voluntary army | 25:56 | |
for our present inequitable and undesirable draft. | 25:58 | |
I see that I have taken up much more time | 26:02 | |
than I thought I would on these general background matters, | 26:05 | |
and I have come to the end of my time, | 26:08 | |
so I will have to leave to my next tape | 26:10 | |
the more detailed discussion | 26:13 | |
of the particular economic issues | 26:14 | |
that are affected by the election. | 26:16 | |
This is Milton Friedman. | 26:18 | |
- | Thank you, sir. | 26:19 |
If you have questions or comments, | 26:21 | |
or suggestions for topics | 26:22 | |
you would like discussed in this series, | 26:24 | |
please send them to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 26:26 | |
166 East Superior Street, Chicago, 60611. | 26:29 |
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