Milton Friedman is the hero of the laissez faire free marketeer crowd, whatever his views were. There is no pure laissez faire nation anywhere on Earth, so that is a straw man.
Friedman’s disciples to this day in the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute reject most of Friedman’s views above.
For instance, the modern conservative movement opposes:
The public school system. Conservatives have always hated the public schools in the US since we put them against great conservative opposition in the 1840′s. The conservative project at least since the Reagan days has been to destroy the public schools of the US. They do this in a variety of ways via privatization, vouchers, defunding, etc.
Public universities. Recently conservatives have declared war on public universities. University costs have been skyrocketing as universities in the US are progressively defunded. It is now to the point where only rich kids can go to college, which is exactly the way that conservatives want it, as that is how it is in most of the world. “If you’re not rich, you can’t go to college.” That is the Republican motto.
Republicans hate public schools for a variety of reasons but the main reason is that they have to pay for them but they do not send their kids to them. Conservatives tend to be people who are rich enough to send their kids to expensive private schools and private universities. They want to destroy public universities because their kids don’t go to them.
There are also other things at work. Conservatives think that public schools are evil and teach radical anti-Christian dogma.
Conservatives have always hated the teachers’ unions possibly more than any other union. This is because the teachers’ unions are one of the last powerful public employee unions in the US. In addition, most conservatives hate public school teachers, especially in grades 7-12 (they seem to give those teaching the little kids a break). Conservatives think teachers are lazy and overpaid and basically bad, worthless people. Just about every conservative I ever met was contemptuous of public school teachers.
The modern conservative movement is of course dead set against a basic income (Friedman wanted $10,000/yr, which is not enough to live on, but oh well). Not only that, but conservatives are determined to destroy all social spending in the US – all government spending on health care (Medicaid and Medicare), retirement (Social Security), housing (Section 8), food (food stamps, WIC) child support (welfare), preschool (Head Start), energy assistance (CARE), and disability (SSI). The poor are already struggling, but modern conservatives want to kick their feet out from under their wobbling legs. If you use any of the programs above, conservatives are your deadly enemies.
Admittedly most conservatives are sane enough to support a Central Bank, but there is definitely a wingnut Libertarian nutcase wing that wants to “Abolish the Fed,” “go back to the gold standard,” and various other economically insane things.
When was the last time you heard a conservative calling for taxes on pollution? Conservatives have opposed every anti-pollution law the US ever passed. They even want to abolish the agency that regulates polluters, the EPA – that agency is one of their worst enemies. Conservatives apparently believe that there should be no pollution controls of any kind in the US. The oppose government efforts to regulate and fine polluting industries. If you hate polluters, conservatives should be your deadly enemies.
Modern conservatives do not believe that the government should ever put any businessmen behind bars for violating the government’s laws regulating business. The last recession was caused when an entire industry (Wall Street banksters) turned into criminals and committed mass organized crime. Predictably, none of these horrible criminals have ever done a day of jail time. At the time, the FBI said that they were not going to arrest any of the banksters who blew up the world’s economy because the FBI said that they would have to arrest all of Wall Street. Some people are “too big to jail.”
So the truth is that Friedman was not quite as insane or horrible as most of his followers. But why is this important? Why does Friedman’s position on anything matter? The man is dead. The people spouting his theories and worshiping him as a Godhead have gone far beyond what he proposed. Is Milton Friedman running the economies of any nation on Earth? Is he in any sort of advisory committee to any state on Earth? Is he even teaching or writing books anymore and manipulating minds that way?
Of course not, he is dead. Therefore his positions are important only for historical purposes, as mere footnotes in our modern saga.
What is really important is what modern day Friedmanites believe, as his disciples are major politicians who are running countries, media workers espousing free market propaganda and economics (almost all economics professors and departments in the US have now been taken over for Friedmanites and free marketeers) and business professors at universities brainwashing the next generation of economists and businessmen.
