Quote Originally Posted by ArchonAlarion View Post
No I think his point was that it wasn't caused by the government, rather than that it was caused by the free market.
his objective was to defend greed, so to back this up he argued the point that great discoveries have come out of greed, such as Einstein's theories.

it's a weak point to make, because great inventions and discoveries have arisen from government-commissioned initiatives, such as the Internet and nuclear weapons. and again, the question had nothing to do with government, it had to do with greed and its relation to capitalism, yet Friedman took the opportunity to bring up the government, hinting that it can't do something as well as the free market powered by greedy people can do. he was conflating irrelevant ideas.

he was also misrepresenting Einstein's motivations, in my opinion. Einstein was a socialist and critic of unfettered markets.

Friedman is arguing that people are always going to be greedy, or at least, we can always expect greed.
i don't disagree with this at all; once you accept that people operate out of self-interest you can understand human behavior better. my problem was with Friedman's reasoning - it's fallacious and misleading. this is concerning to me, because people eat up bad arguments such as his, and then go out and propagate these ideas that are based on fallacious reasoning.

How will giving monopolistic priviledges to some of these greedy people solve our problems?
the problem is how do you check the people out there who are greedy enough so as to take advantage of the system (whatever it may be, including a lack of one) to the point where other individuals' rights and welfare are threatened.

if you are referring to the government, of course the government won't solve all of our problems -i don't believe anyone out there actually believes that. what they disagree on is what the optimal level of government involvement should be.