Free trade, sovereignty, democracy Book

I really enjoyed this book, and it confirmed some of my fears that I am really a libertarian at heart.

The basic premise is that people should be free to make their own choices whenever possible, and that government's role is to protect us from each other, and not to protect us from ourselves.

The Friedmans argue from a pragmatic standpoint more than from a philosophical standpoint. Generally, government does a poor job with what it touches. We have this idea in our head that government is a sort of nanny, necessary to protect us from the bad decisions that we might make. The Friedmans argue that not only does the market perform this function already, but that the government does a poor job at it.

Because government "protection agencies" are all brakes and no gas, they often create terrible inefficiencies. One of the examples that I found compelling was of the Food and Drug Administration. It takes over a year to get most drugs approved. In that time, there are many people who die of the diseases that those drugs cure, but who are unable to take them. For some of these people, the risk of side effects is worth it, and they would be happy to take their chances. In a market system, people would be allowed to take those chances. In some cases, many times more people die of curable diseases than side effects could ever hurt or kill. Because the FDA will never get in trouble for examining a drug "too thoroughly", but will make headlines if a drug that they approve has dangerous side effects, they err heavily on the side of not approving drugs.

As long as government made sure that information about the drugs flowed freely, and wasn't censored by the drug companies, people would soon find out about side effects and effectiveness, without the FDA.

There are a number of examples like this, where markets do a fine job of conveying information, and government agencies provide unneeded inefficiencies.