Milton Friedman vs. Frances Fox Piven on Free Enterprise

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12 жыл бұрын

In this classic video footage from Free To Choose Network, Milton Friedman debates Frances Fox Piven on free enterprise. Piven is skeptical that free enterprise has helped the world's poorest people rise out of poverty and seems to be confused about the difference between free enterprise and colonialism. Friedman asks: "Compared to what?" Thomas Sowell joins the debate at the end and suggests we look at the evidence.
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Пікірлер: 147

@danielholm1987 7 жыл бұрын

Capitalism doesn't do anything. Free people do things. Capitalism is the natural economic condition of a free people. More individual freedom = more capitalism.

@monsterhunter445 4 жыл бұрын

If I am free to do whatever I want then that could conflict with your freedom to do whatever you want. Freedom in what sense

@Davidhussey8917 4 жыл бұрын

Absolutely true

@leethompson9497 10 жыл бұрын

Frances Fox Piven is a great example of offering an argument without an argument

@gambu4810 4 жыл бұрын

I'm not sold that equality is important. Freedom is what is important

@meisterscheister8461 7 жыл бұрын

1:21 Thomas Sowell throws his hands up like, "Is she truly this stupid?"

@thebronxguy916 4 жыл бұрын

Frances Fox Piven A academic for Modern-day SLAVERY = SOCIALIST COMMUNIST IDEALS of government STATES CONTROL

@DeadAbeVigoda 3 жыл бұрын

Piven argues in vague labels, Friedman & Sowell argue in hard, cold facts.

@pneron2032 4 жыл бұрын

I am going to use that line (2:18) "Are you talking about a testable hypothesis, or is it just ax-i-o-matic that it is so?"

@CcharlyY89 10 жыл бұрын

Thomas Sowell just gave up with this lost cause woman at 1:21

@mediumraresteak851 6 жыл бұрын

I can feel the frustration felt by Friedman and Sowell when she completely dodges the question. Then she has the arrogance to mention examples that weaken her position.

@SatiricalStewie 11 жыл бұрын

"The free market is of itself not an alternative because you'll agree it does not exist".......substitute the sentence "I Have no argument!"

@dmreeoogdaq 10 жыл бұрын

Does anyone else find it interesting that statists/leftists/socialists talk with great passion about "providing equality" and "escaping oppression", as if a government can create an environment in which everyone is "equal" without oppression? In a free society; namely ours (well, it used to be free), the government is tasked with providing equality of opportunity. When a government attempts to create equality of results, it necessarily has to engage in tyranny at some level.

@PenguinProseMedia 8 жыл бұрын

This is not even a fair fight. lol. Sorry Ms. Piven, Milton is running laps around you..

@Nokomisclub 12 жыл бұрын

Shrill lib vs pragmatic conservative. Some things never change.

@iwillknifeya 5 жыл бұрын

She reminds me of the tutors, lecturers, professors, and doctors at the University of Tasmania. My ears are bleeding.

@mixmastermeeks 11 жыл бұрын

Friedman and Sowell on Piven is like dropping an atom bomb on a sandbar. Overkill. Either one mops the floor with her mop like wig.

@inglese2996 4 жыл бұрын

Would love to have milton or thomas as a drinking buddy. I'd just ask various questions about things i was interested in, but not fully informed... Then sit back and be educated

@jazbrogonzo 7 жыл бұрын

DAMN...where's a Milton Freedman when we one...

@ERICGRIMEY1 12 жыл бұрын

Sowell is awesome

@symunir9022 11 жыл бұрын

Piven reserves her right to be skeptical, even if it means denying the very reality of our own land (the US). Do millions of people from around the world sneak in to this country and then, upon arrival, try their darnedest best to stay because they prefer govt tyranny which we may risk becoming, or because of our free enterprise system which offers them the most they can have? Show me a country where the govt knows best. How many people are lining up, to get there??

@SupaNami 10 жыл бұрын

Capitalism works ... the other "ism's" do not work!!

@bigollameo 9 жыл бұрын

SupaNami Unproven assumption.

@thereasonbehindchickensacts 5 жыл бұрын

@@bigollameo proven one

@michaelangeloright704 4 жыл бұрын

During these Modern-times Mao's Socialist Communist reign of terror. How many of his own Citizens he had killed during the 1900s. Modern-day SjW Socialist Communist States Control.

@ktrigg2 11 жыл бұрын

Sowell's fro is ten times cooler than Piven's.

@genzcurmudgeon8037 4 жыл бұрын

If the elites in this video from 1980 arguing in favour of lessening inequality could see the lives of people making minimum wage in the west today they would have a tough time arguing that they have it hard and that there existence is a disgrace. They eat themselves and entertain themselves to death. The problems of the 21st venture will be cultural and spiritual as we learn to adapt to incredible abundance and wealth.

@rh929292 11 жыл бұрын

Is the rest of this debate available here on KZfaq? I don't see a part number or anything so I'm not sure what to look for. Thanks.

@TacoCreative 11 жыл бұрын

It may be an endless debate, but it nonetheless remains worthwhile. Clearly, some people simply don't understand that the purpose of ethical deliberation is not to 'win' or 'prove' you opponent wrong, but to make sure the debate can keep on going.

@xxcrysad3000xx 12 жыл бұрын

These clips are nice but is there a place where the entire interview can be seen? These snippets don't do Friedman, Sowell, or Piven justice--I'd think with a name evoking Friedman's "Free To Choose" mantra, you would actually present the debate in its proper context, so we can truly be free to choose. In the instance of this clip, we aren't, it's obvious who is made out to be the good guys and who is the bad.

@rodn5yn 10 жыл бұрын

This response would apply to a microeconomics topic. When speaking of the free market as a whole we're speaking of a macroeconomic concern. the above post addresses how large concerns have the ability to use it's influence to effect market outcomes.

@diamonddust22 11 жыл бұрын

Best description ever lol

@xxcrysad3000xx 12 жыл бұрын

Ah big thanks, I'll be sure to watch these soon, Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics plus Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom were basically my introduction to economics, and wonderful as they are I do think they've somewhat become a product of their time. Having said that, it's a wonderful to have these resources at one's fingertips.

@deep51 11 жыл бұрын

Again, where in history, or where in the world today do you have a better alternative to a free market system?

@Tylerxy 12 жыл бұрын

LOL. And just think, he had to sit next to her.

@asraiSOA 12 жыл бұрын

The Cloward and Piven strategy -- look it up and then check their ties with Obozo.

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

and what is so "unlawful" about people being able to decide what products and services are best for them and at what price?? I would say it is far more "unlawful" to have government(which is just other people) tell you what you should do with the money after they have already taxed a good portion away..

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Please provide a case where a corporation dispossesses and plunders and pillage.

@AZCobraman 5 жыл бұрын

BAM!

@Hosshin 12 жыл бұрын

i am Pretty sure Milton and tom jumped up and gave each other a big high five ,directly after this Absolute Bosses!

@Jdeneik 10 жыл бұрын

Im a Victim vs I have personal responsibility

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

So very few people do. I mean, she takes it to the extreme and propses and outright ban on freedom, but the masses still don't understand what the full scope of that word means.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

The transcript of our debate remains. I responded to every point you brought up. Those who would like to break out of the false ideological mantra of "free market" dogma can read and learn. Those who choose not to, can continue to celebrate a totally bankrupt economic fundamentalism and hide their ignorance behind epithets..

@MIAcane23 4 жыл бұрын

Would someone please be so kind as to enlighten me on what exactly it is Dr. Sowell is referring to and what he is saying? I always find it sort of confusing and it sounds like he is retorting Dr. Friedman's example, when by the point this video was filmed I am 100% sure he is no longer a Marxist. If someone could explain what exactly his point is, particularly in reference to the "capitalists", and who he is directly addressing I would greatly appreciate it!

@gauravshah4857 4 жыл бұрын

Thomas sowell is a free market proponent. He was not retorting to friedman, but to the woman

@streetballaky 12 жыл бұрын

you can watch all the episodes without interruption at freetochoose.tv/

@michaelreyes3825 10 жыл бұрын

There will all ways be a smaller business that is wiling or able to take the chances that a larger corp wont or cannot, so there will all ways be a new market, unless like neoliberal policies encapsulate it and suffocate it. IMO

@ACDC7369 11 жыл бұрын

tom sowell was so young!!!!!

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Corporations are not government entities. Corporations are businesses that operate under a profit motive. They must have a solid customer base and their survival depends on customer satisfaction and a good reputation. They are constantly petitioned by foreign governments to come to their country and provide jobs that are more than an agrarian subsistence survival. Since 1900 governments have executed more than 100 million of its own citizens under the guise of improving standards of living.

@cf40409 11 жыл бұрын

My argument, which is actually quite simple, does not require that I produce alternatives. I'll rephrase: Increasing standards of living is not a sufficient condition for maintaining a particular social order. Perhaps you disagree? And just because you've not heard of alternative does not necessarily mean that they do not exist. But suppose that we know there are no alternatives. It would only make "free" market penetration inevitable, not necessarily a good thing/moral thing.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

You need to find the definition of statism. Found in most dictionary's.

@kmelfina 12 жыл бұрын

1:22 Lol @ Thomas Sowell. I can't blame him though.

@cf40409 11 жыл бұрын

Didn't see that one coming...and you still haven't answered the question. I am asking you to evaluate an argument: Increasing standards of living are a sufficient condition for a just society. Is this a good argument? It's a shame you will not tell me what your thoughts are on it. I'm sure you have something more interesting to say than what you've said so far.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

In the 20th century in Latin American, for example, governments have historically been ruled by unaccountable, autocratic regimes that are allied with Washington and impose economic policies that benefit corporations by dispossessing the vast democratic majority of their resources. So, yes, we can agree that these governments and corporations do not allow free market capitalism but they are presented to us by our government and corporate media as doing exactly that. (Insert here the Piven meme.)

@aparthia 11 жыл бұрын

I think you should read his works then, he explicitly endorses a state.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

There is no tyranny in a corporation. That claim is total nonsense. The goal of a corporation is profit. If there are no profits the corporation ceases to exist. All members and employees of a corporation is voluntary. A corporation does not use force as do governments. The only democracy in a corporation is granted by the directors in choosing a president or CEO. If the leaders don't perform, they are fired.

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

I dont understand your arguement?? What is your correlation between free enterprise economics and government oppressment of people by taking their land by violence and force?

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

That's correct, what's called "free enterprise" is not a lawful system. Maybe the abstract model is, but I'm interested in the real world, and in the real world "free enterprise" and "capitalism" have gone hand in hand with violent dispossession.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

No details? This is not a reason to destroy free market capitalism. It is the only system where men can be free.

@optionsupdate 11 жыл бұрын

is there a strategy called piven? used to bankrupt social security?

@titopatt 12 жыл бұрын

Never ask a statist what their solution is to a problem.

@TacoCreative 11 жыл бұрын

I DID NOT SAY HE WAS WRONG. Why won't you answer the question?

@cf40409 11 жыл бұрын

You should read more carefully. I say Milton Friedman "sees no alternative to market penetration...", NOT that I see alternatives. I don't even imply it. But that's irrelevant because, as I said, suppose we know there are no alternatives...that Friedman's suspicions are correct, in other words. This only makes free market penetration inevitable, not moral. Read more carefully and answer the question: Are increasing standards of living a sufficient condition for a just society?

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

Frances Fox Priven is correct, but when Friedman responded by asking what alternative is better, she should have responded by expanding on the example she gave of peasants losing their lands (she may have at some other moment outside this short clip?). How do peasants lose their lands? They lose them by violence and force not by some abstract, mystical superiority of "the market." So one obvious alternative is for peasants not to be violently dispossessed in the first place.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Nationalizing companies is not free enterprise, it is not capitalism. Free market capitalism is hands off by government. If a company fails the government does not rescue.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

How did the United Fruit Company get the lands in the first place? Did some "free market" genie just wave a wand and all of a sudden these Guatemalan lands were the property of United Fruit?

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

A corporation is a private tyranny because it is a top down structure in which all power is placed in an unaccountable board of directors, decisions are made at the top, without democratic input, and then these decisions are imposed down the chain of command. Any type of democratic input from the base (from within or without) is simply excluded or, if it's included, is at the whim and will of the CEO and board of directors. Government is non-democratic to the extent that corporations own them.

@Rodriguez8611 11 жыл бұрын

That's not a good question because a capitalist economy doesn't exist. Mixed economy exists. So the question should really be: where in history, or where in the world today can you find a capitalist economy that has or had a long lasting success?

@jeffsond 10 жыл бұрын

shes a great friend of Obama. He gets a lot of his understanding of how America should be from much of her work.

@aparthia 11 жыл бұрын

i think you need to look it up actually, supporting a state --> statist, not supporting a state(**anti-state**) --> anti-statist.

@brandonkemp644 10 жыл бұрын

I had the good fortune of meeting Piven recently. She is a remarkably sharp thinker who speaks with a combination of eloquence and self-restraint. Far from lacking humility, as one commenter on here suggested, she demonstrates a great deal of it in continually tolerating Sowell and Friedman speaking over her. Why not put the whole debate up so we can judge for ourselves? If you have to edit out Piven's response, that hardly bodes well for the (decidedly euphemistic) "free market" side of the debate. Some of us would like to see it.

@RedSkiesMusic 12 жыл бұрын

OWNED.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

The state-capitalist U.S. economy is not "free market," so what do you mean by a "free market system"? Do you mean that every nation should try to emulate the terror and aggression of the U.S. to carve out for themselves a similar type of empire and provide massive state subsidies to high tech industry, agribusiness and basically every dynamic sector of the economy and then off shore the manufacture of consumer items to places like China, where labor is held captive and brutally exploited?

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

United Fruit, Chiquita, Anaconda, AT&T, Shell, Occidental Petroleum, Bechtel, Drummond, etc.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Here. Internet search "Common Sense Capitalism.

@fuski23 Ай бұрын

Lol, to argue with Friedman & Sowell about economic. Without anything but feelings and harsh words... Silly.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Without government you have anarchy. The only reasonable purpose of government is to provide courts and police and to protect our borders. I still don't know what you mean by state. Milton is not a statist.

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

no they haven;t !! You can't use the fallacy of what many people "call" free enterprise" for real free enterprise. We HAVE had very free market conditons in the past, from 1776 until 1913 in America. And in that time period you SAW the average man's standard of living improve DRAMATICALLY. More so than in any other society in human history. So again, what is your arguement. If I take a shit, and call it a ham sandwich, that doesn't make it a ham sandwich.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

Also, the category of the dispossessed cannot be limited to the idea of peasants within the context of European feudalism. The Indigenous people of the entire American hemisphere, for example, were subjected to genocidal levels of violence and dispossession, with entire cultures and ways of life destroyed. So to remove the so-called "free market" from any historical context is to mystify the concept and place the economic model in the realm of abstract ideas, carefully insulated from reality.

@aparthia 11 жыл бұрын

Which is untrue, a statist is one who endorses and supports the existence of a state, a position both Milton Friedman and many socialists hold.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

What do you mean by state? He is not an anarchist but does recognize the function of limited government. He is absolutely against central planing which is the hallmark of socialist governments.

@cf40409 11 жыл бұрын

A serf on the Lord's land in a Feudal society would be just as entitled to criticize the social order if he was much better off than before, as he would be if he was not much better off, or even worse off. He does not need to propose alternatives. If the King was to argue that the serf's criticism amounted to nothing because the serf is better off than before, he would be making a bad argument, would he not?

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

Free enterprise economics as an abstract mystical model may be wonderful, but I'm talking about the real world in which what is passed off as "free enterprise" is based on the use of violence by undemocratic U.S.-supported Latin American governments to dispossess people of their lands. For example, Guatemala 1954. The U.S. supported the overthrow of the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz because he had nationalized unused lands claimed by United Fruit company, paying the company for them.

@TheMrNightrain 11 жыл бұрын

lol @ Sowell at 1:22. She is incapable of answering the question.

@aparthia 11 жыл бұрын

Milton is a statist too

@isedairi 11 жыл бұрын

free enterprise system? people still talk about such utopias?? ridiculous

@spartacus9189 11 жыл бұрын

what? try other economics beside Friedman by the way ( Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding, Oskar Lange, Paul Sweezy)

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Meant to add that a statist is a socialist which is far...very far from Miltons position.

@jsminch 11 жыл бұрын

The person to whom I am replying knows absolutly nothing about the history of man or the normal state of man in that history.

@54683NS 11 жыл бұрын

I agree, the actual political and economic system departs radically from the celebrated model of free market capitalism, which sounds great as an abstraction but does not describe the real world. So I think you need to ask your question to Milton Friedman and make sure you include lots of question marks so that he can hear you from the grave.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

I'm beginning to think you are a troll. You don't know what you are talking about. Look up the definition of statism. Milton Friedman is not a statist. Milton is as far form government central planning as anyone can get.

@MusicaX79 11 жыл бұрын

Am I the only one that didn't understand a single thing she said. what is she arguing she's jumping all over the place.

@spartacus9189 12 жыл бұрын

free enterprise is a term use almost as the same to capitalism; CAPITALISM HAS NEVER PRODUCE FREEDOM NOR EQUALITY for the vast majority of the population in any country in all eras: it is a system of private accumulation of wealth (for a minority) while the majority of a country live adjusted to a limited salary that rarely covers the cost of living(housing, health,etc); Frieman and Sowell are two sophists that look to anylize arguments when on the contrary there is no substance behind them

@cf40409 11 жыл бұрын

There were increasing standards of living in slave societies throughout history. Is this a argument in favor of slavery? Milton's argument is equally flawed. Just because he sees no alternative to market penetration in the third world and it's effects, even if these effects were an increase in the standards of living of the people in these places, this is not a good argument for free markets/enterprise.

@S3Mi87 4 жыл бұрын

"Just because he sees no alternative to market" - So what's the alternative economic genius?? He asked that commie the same question, no response.

@whgage 11 жыл бұрын

Absolutely not. He supports free enterprise capitalism.

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

really? Do you want to know the fundamental difference between a corporation and government? Government can and does take your money by force, corporations cannot. ANd your use of the word democracy(which is never what the founders eanted, they wanted a republic) is quite odd. And corprations are Private tyrannies? Tell me how a corpration can become a private tyranny without government assistance? Its not possible unless they can offer the best product or serive at the best price.

@63Bueno 11 жыл бұрын

Again, you are talking politics here, what does that have to do with the free enterprise system????????????????????????? The lands she and you speak about are those that have departed the most from free market capitalism....I don't see the arguement? Please explain better.

@Dufustoo 11 жыл бұрын

A rabid wild-eyed lunatic.

@rodn5yn 10 жыл бұрын

I disagree. Free market is a condition in which supply and demand determine the value of goods and services. If government does not intervene corporations would use collusion and other methods to skew the effects of natural market mechanisms such as supply and demand.

@Esoteric0714 10 жыл бұрын

All these arguments are 25 years obsolete. When they all spoke, it made sense to divide the world into "free" market "capitalism" on one end and socialism on the other. But that's no longer the world we live in. Thus, in our time, the issue is not what are the alternatives to capitalism. The issue is a. what results in out economic model do we not like and b. what market and nonmarket interventions should we deploy to correct them. Unfortunately, too many people instantly respond by reaching for the Friedman arguments of this video, and labeling everything socialism.

@DucksDeLucks 10 жыл бұрын

Did Friedman endorse all the stuff done in the name of free-market capitalism? I doubt it. As for the Nobel Prize, everyone agrees he was a great economist; besides how about Obama? WFT?? Nobel Prizes are kind of like Grammys. I wouldn't put much stock in them.