Friedman Wisdom
9 February 2007
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
You are unduly mystified over the fact that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott joined forces with labor-union leader Andy Stern to press for government-run health-care ("Andy Stern | Wal-Mart," Feb. 9). Such an alliance would be mysterious only if business people were generally champions of free markets. But most are not. The late Milton Friedman said it well:
"The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he's opposed to freedom for others.... He thinks ... there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.... The businessmen are just the opposite - every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
You are unduly mystified over the fact that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott joined forces with labor-union leader Andy Stern to press for government-run health-care ("Andy Stern | Wal-Mart," Feb. 9). Such an alliance would be mysterious only if business people were generally champions of free markets. But most are not. The late Milton Friedman said it well:
"The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he's opposed to freedom for others.... He thinks ... there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.... The businessmen are just the opposite - every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Wednesday October 17, 2007 at 5:46pm