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Originally Posted by JayTeeMe
Well, the target audience was a typical PBS viewer. And the benefits of free trade weren't widely discussed by anyone in 1980, thus the need for the series.
Friedman is advocating free trade, not abolishing the government. You're not arguing with pvn here.
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I won't argue against the macro view that many protectionist trade policies can be counterproductive, but Friedman is arguing far more than that. He takes his macro view and wants to apply it to everything. He even takes pains to rail against licensing doctors in the video. That has ****all to do with macroeconomics.
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As Friedman says "In all this, the government of Hong Kong has played an important part, not only in what it has done but as much by what it has refrained from doing. It has ensured that laws are enforced and contracts honored. It has provided the conditions in which a free market can function. It has not tried to direct the economy...There are no tarriffs or trade subsidies; Hong Kong is too depended on foreign trade."
"Hong Kong is very far from utopia. It has its slums, its crime, its desperately poor people. But the people are free, that's why so many people have come here. Here, they have the freedom and the opportunity to better themselves, to improve their lot and many succeed."
To paraphrase, their conditions are appauling to us as we're far richer. But their conditions are not viewed as poor by the majority of the world. To them, the conditions as they exist in Hong Kong are something to aspire to.
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Admittedly, I posted my rant before watching the part of it where he pretty much said the same thing I did. Still, it's pretty clear that he considers the chaos of a 1980 Hong Kong street market as the ideal model for all economies, in all places, at every stage of their development. I think that's horse****, for one because all advanced societies evolve away from it when they become more prosperous. People don't want that much chaos in their lives, even if it means they are more "free". They want predictable stability and safety. That's why we have a Fed that tries to soften the economic rollercoaster. Traders love market volatility, but Joe and Jane 401(k) sure as hell don't, because they rightly understand that added profit potential comes with added risk.
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Was Friedman anti-PBS or something?
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I can only assume he would not be in favor of government funded television.
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I think you missed the point of that story. Amazingly, literally thousands of people worked together without ever knowing it to make something as simple as a pencil. All without any central planner dictating they do so.
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I got the point, I just don't think it is very interesting or relevant. It's also a massive Cold War strawman. "See that big, scary Soviet Union? Their central economy is so bad they can't even keep toilet paper on the shelves! Capitalist USA#1!"
It would only be a decent argument if there had ever been US policy in place to centrally manage the 99.9% of crap that gets produced. There never was, nor was there ever a serious proposal for anything like it.
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The people of Hong Kong are free. They have no democracy but they enjoy a tremendous amount of civil and economic freedom. The state of affairs in China was definitely tyranny. How far past Tianamen Square were we in 1980?
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How do you define "free" and how do you think the people fleeing mainland China 30 years ago defined it? I'm pretty sure they weren't thinking the only thing missing in their lives was the freedom to carve ivory ashtrays for export. They were probably thinking, "I'd rather not starve to death or get murdered in the next cultural revolution."
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