Brittan on Friedman and the Austrians
In his obit, Samuel Brittan astutely notes the differences on method between Friedman and the Austrians.
Indeed, Friedman lived long enough to see a reaction against basing economics on discoverable numerical relationships and the revival of so-called Austrian methods which concentrated on predicting general features of interacting systems on the lines of biology and linguistics.
Comments (2)
Björn Lundahl
Friedman, my heart is bleeding.
When I was 19 years old, Milton Friedman was my idol. His views contrasted a lot against the political opinions in Sweden. He was the counterpart to John Kenneth Galbraith.
He was the man who learnt me that there is something which is called the money supply and that there is a connection between the money supply, business cycles and inflation.
He opened the door to a more free market policy. I followed his ideas closely when some of them were practised in Chile.
When Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were elected, I was very happy. They were influenced by his ideas. I was in an ecstasy. Now his ideas would have an influence throughout the entire world! God, I must be dreaming! Life was bright and liberty, I thought, was taking over! Everyone who knew me also knew that I loved Friedman. I always talked about him.
I bought his video films with his television series “Free to choose”. My best friend George and I watched those videos. He was not at all interested. My best friend George always started to fall asleep when I started the video recorder. I watched George, hey! Watch and listen! George! And I rewound the tape so George did not miss anything! Poor George, he was really forced to watch those movies.
George and I went to Hong Kong. I really wanted to experience his ideas in reality. I was impressed!
I also read some of Hayek’s work. For a New liberty, by Murray Rothbard, I first read it in the spring 1980. He was too extreme, I thought, in those days, “but still his ideas seemed to be very logical”.
Much later on, in life, I converted entirely to the Austrian School of Economics (I believe in the late 90s).
I, still, do believe that it was Friedman’s ideas that were one of the very great causes for all deregulations and relatively low inflation rates throughout the entire world.
The Austrian School of Economics is a lot more sophisticated than the Chicago School. It has a comprehensive world view, which the Chicago school is lacking. I believe that The Austrian School of Economics is superior compared to any school of economics.
I do also believe that it was Friedman’s charisma as an individual that influenced my heart.
He was a good and nice man, really quite sweet.
Well, life must go on… I am so sorry…
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Published: November 17, 2006 7:54 AM
Björn Lundahl
Watch some video clips from Milton Friedman’s television series ”Free to Choose”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbUl7flfEhw&mode=related&search=
Björn Lundahl
Published: November 17, 2006 3:28 PM