Consider, for example, language. It is a complex structure that is continually changing and developing. It has a well-defined order, yet no central b… - Milton Friedman
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Consider, for example, language. It is a complex structure that is continually changing and developing. It has a well-defined order, yet no central body planned it. No one decided what words should be admitted into the language, what the rules of grammar should be, which words should be adjectives, which nouns. The French Academy does try to control changes in the French language, but that was a late development. It was established long after French was already a highly structured language and it mainly serves to put the seal of approval on changes over which it has no control. There have been few similar bodies for other languages. How did language develop? In much the same way as an economic order develops through the market — out of the voluntary interaction of individuals, in this case seeking to trade ideas or information or gossip rather than goods and services with one another.
Milton Friedman (31 July 1912 – 16 November 2006) was an American economist noted for his support for free markets and a reduction in the size of government. In 1976 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics.
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We speak loosely of the “corporation’s income” or of “business” having an income. That is figurative language. The corporation is an intermediary between its owners — the stockholders — and the resources other than the stockholders’ capital, the services of which it purchases. Only people have incomes and they derive them through the market from the resources they own,
In part because there are so many laws to break; and the more laws there are to break, the harder it is to prevent them from being broken
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Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
