My previous post was on how I was brought up. This one is one is on my father. The attitude to his children, treating them as people who had the same intellectual status as he did, was applied more generally. He would argue with anyone. I remember one argument with the proprietor of the garage in New Hampshire where we had our car fixed, who was arguing that a big company, by spending enough on advertising, could always sell what they produced. The example he offered was a new car Ford had just brought out called the Edsel.
I discovered him through the Free to Choose lectures, which I listened to with rapt attention around 2008. A friend talked about him all the time and I was persuaded. He was such a brilliant precise thinker and you could see it in his arguments. He was always compassionate and understanding, even with rude questions. I was struck by that. "Vidhya dadaati vinayam" (Sanskrit for : Great depth of knowledge gives you compassion.")
You are fortunate you knew to pay attention to his ideas and can talk about them from an insider's perspective.
MF had totally nailed the art of arguments. I have never came across anyone of his stature do it better than him. You could ask him any dumb question and he would answer it with such rigor and sincerity that he always seemed like a guy on your side even if he just told you, you are wrong.
This quality is lacking in modern day intellectuals who are just too eager to win arguments rather than actually winning. Everyone wants that 10 second answer that proves how smart they are and how stupid the other-side is so that it can be turned into a viral reel.
MF by contrast could clearly be seen as a man of principle and reason undisturbed by political climate and desire to take anyone's sides.
Thanks for the post, David. I do have one question about your father, if I may. There is a story I read somewhere online many years ago to the effect of this.
Milton Friedman was visiting a country, and as he rode around in a car with his guide, he noticed a construction site where workers were using shovels and the like instead of more modern equipment. He asked the guide: “Why are these workers using shovels?” To which the guide responded: “It’s to create jobs. If they using modern equipment they won’t be enough jobs to go around.” To which Milton Friedman responded: “Then why don’t they use spoons instead and create even more jobs?”
I have always wondered if this story actually happened. Of course, whether it did or not, it displays an impressive amount of economic wisdom for such a short anecdote (at least, I think it does).
I read that same story a long time ago, in S. I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action. I'm not sure I recall correctly, but I think he might have attributed it to Stuart Chase.
The greatest public intelectual of the XXth century. I am not a libertarian, but a typical European Christian/social democrat, but at the end of the seventies, the restoration of the market as the “defect economic mechanism” was a matter of survival for the Western civilization. Your parents were two lucky people, but the world was also lucky of having them.
While I see the point of TANSTAAFL, a while back I read Israel Kirzner's Competition and Entrepreneurship, a discussion of those phenomena from an Austrian perspective. A point Kirzner made was that the key thing entrepreneurs did was maintain a high level of alertness to opportunities, and be the first to take the initiative in acting on them. It struck me that what Kirzner was saying was that market economies are full of free lunches, and it's entrepreneurs who harvest them. . . .
It's not the exact quote you mentioned, but in this clip, after describing how the Fed totally failed its mission during the great depression, he says, "And so what happened? The Federal Reserve System wasn't abolished, unfortunately." Clearly implying that he thought it would've been better if it had been abolished. Not that the fed gradually increasing the money supply at a steady rate was optimal policy, but the best policy given the reality of its unfortunate existence.
Interesting that my father, 5 years older than yours, deployed some of the same choice canards. He was a surgeon, not an economist, but it seems likely that the central event of their early adulthood - the Depression - perhaps played a part in that. It was "lazy man's load" - invoked to me for the same purpose - that got the memory machine rolling. Thanks for the that. I can't claim to have left my own kids with anything as sticky and apt. But I have been reminded in recent years that 'bad money drives out good', another fave of the old man when the opportunity arose. I didn't know WTF at the time - chronically slow on the uptake. But having made it this far I have a better idea now.
Another good one from that same generation was "we aren't rich enough to buy poor" which I still tell my kids. I didn't really understand that one myself until I dropped two socioeconomic classes in the space of three years.
Thank you for sharing, and thank you for replying to people's messages yourself. Sometimes it still feels remarkable that as a layman I can directly communicate to intellectuals I respect so much.
Replying is easier with email and online conversations than it was for him with ordinary mail. On the other hand, mailing someone is also easier — I'm not sure he could have answered all his correspondents if writing him had been as easy then as it would be now.
I am irritated when someone writes something online that I want to respond to and there is no obvious way to do so. The implication is that he only wants to talk, not to listen.
Sometimes the poor -- as in inexperienced -- carpenter would be correct to blame his tools. There are a great many tools out there which are terribly made. An extremely good craftsman, using all his or her skill, can still manage a good result with such things. There also are other tools which are well-made but also designed so that they should only be used once you have acquired a certain level of skill. Before then, they will just be too hard to use. Unfortunately, novices by definition do not know enough to stay away from both sorts of trouble. I think because of this adage, a good many learners expect too much of themselves, and conscientiously blame their poor result on their lack of skill instead of understanding that they really do need better tools, especially when they are learning the job. One moral is to try to have an expert around when buying an unfamiliar tool. Another is not to be too hasty in concluding that something is too hard a thing for you to learn.
The carpenter has an incentive to blame someone other than himself. The tools don't get to give their side of the story. So while the tools might be at fault, that isn't the way to bet.
Also, the statement is about a bad carpenter, hence one likely to be at fault.
This is a marvelous post! By the way, in my 20s, as a freelance journalist for a small newspaper in Southern California, I sent your father a news article I'd written that attempted to skewer some statist views though it was not an opinion piece. "You did nobly," he wrote back. In fact, he wrote me several times, with comments in the margins of my snail-mail letters. When I decided to interview all my favorite economists for a book, I interviewed both him and you. He was at the height of his fame-- it was the 1980s-- yet he responded right away and said I could do a 15 minute interview over the phone if I could wait six months, because he was so busy. I was happy to wait. I hadn't started my book project at this point, I just wanted to ask him about Social Security, in hopes of writing an op-ed for the Orange County Register, which I did. At that time, I was not an employee of any newspaper or even employed, except as a freelancer. I had only my own name (Joy Anthony at the time) and my earnestness as backing. He gave me a great interview. Unfortunately, I was too shy to pursue my book project to the end, since I was attempting to cover the personal lives of the great economists as well as their beliefs and I never did ask him about his. But many of my efforts were turned into op-eds for the Orange County Register. I remember that you and I got into an argument on the economics of gift giving. You wrote in your textbook that monetary gifts make the most sense. It was an interesting discussion. I'm so glad you shared the links you did in this post. Thank you.
Here's something on taxi medallions in New York City. It's from Wikipedia:
(The price of medallions) peaked around 2013 at over $1,000,000. Between 2014 and 2015, New York City's non-corporate medallion price dropped 45%. In 2015, the price had fallen to approximately $650,000. As of 2018, one could purchase a medallion for less than $200,000.
I think DDF is wrong about gift giving. The payoff of giving a gift is not simply the recipient's enjoyment of it, or their increase in utility. The payoff is the pleasure of trying to think of something that they will enjoy, or find useful, but that they would never think of getting for themself, so that it comes as a surprise.
For example, I have a friend who practices the fabric arts, including spinning and knitting. This last Christmas, my wife and I bought a good print of Velazquez's Las Hilanderas (showing two women spinning, one by spindle and one by wheel, based on the contest of Athene and Arachne) and sent it to her. She wrote back that she really liked it and was going to frame it and put it in her workrooms. We could not have gotten nearly as much pleasure by just sending her the money and knowing she spent it on something she wanted. Since part of the motive for making gifts is our own pleasure, that's not irrelevant.
I totally agree. And I think David agreed in part. It's a thrill to buy something that shows your knowledge of the other person, both for them and for yourself.
Many of us have been lucky enough to have wise and compassionaye fathers, I have tried to be so to my children.
My anecdote: I grew up in a very small farming community. Perhaps 800 people in the township at its height just after WWII, and 350 in the small village. It took me years to realize that my father 'ran' the community, in that no important decision was made until they had asked for Jim's thoughts. He was much ike your father, I think. He clearly defined a goal (and often said that if you didn't know where you wanted to go you might well end up some place you didn't want to be) then everyone discussed how to best achieve it.
He asked a lot of questions of anyone concerned or who want to talk, and he was a great listener. At some point he'd say, "Well, it appears that the best thing for everyone would be . . ." and describe a decision/policy that basically everyone had led themselves to. He had a gift.
And he spent some years on the village board. He seemed to enjoy it. There was another guy, Ed, who pretty much opposed everything, especially if it meant spending village funds. Ed could be a bit harsh and obstreperous. But Dad loved Ed. He said Ed was really never disagreeable, exactly, just serious, and never insulting, he many times made important points, and "If I could convice Ed I just knew I had to be right." He told me that you need a good, serious opponent to challenge you becasue without that you got slow and your arguments got dull, and your decisions got worse.
And Dad would take any side of any argument. He could make the best argument for things he didn't believe or like. He said that you have to know your opponents' argument as well as they do, or even better than they do if you're going to reach the best solution.
Lovely. How amazing and wonderful to have such a father! I still have several copies of Free to Choose in my closet, ready to give to someone in need -- if they are open to reading it. That and Capitalism and Freedom were powerful influencers and educators for me in the early 1980s. (My record shows that I read Capitalism and Freedom in August 1982, one month after your Machinery of Freedom.)
Love this reflection. PS: I once wrote a homage to Milton and Rose Friedman's beautiful idea" -- the negative-income tax -- in my 2020 Chapman Law Review paper titled "Guaranteed Income: Chronicle of a Political Death Foretold"; see here: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/chapman-law-review/vol23/iss1/3/
I've been dying to know how either you or your father dealt with temper tantrums when you or your children were very young. This is one thing I've never been able to figure out.
I discovered him through the Free to Choose lectures, which I listened to with rapt attention around 2008. A friend talked about him all the time and I was persuaded. He was such a brilliant precise thinker and you could see it in his arguments. He was always compassionate and understanding, even with rude questions. I was struck by that. "Vidhya dadaati vinayam" (Sanskrit for : Great depth of knowledge gives you compassion.")
You are fortunate you knew to pay attention to his ideas and can talk about them from an insider's perspective.
MF had totally nailed the art of arguments. I have never came across anyone of his stature do it better than him. You could ask him any dumb question and he would answer it with such rigor and sincerity that he always seemed like a guy on your side even if he just told you, you are wrong.
This quality is lacking in modern day intellectuals who are just too eager to win arguments rather than actually winning. Everyone wants that 10 second answer that proves how smart they are and how stupid the other-side is so that it can be turned into a viral reel.
MF by contrast could clearly be seen as a man of principle and reason undisturbed by political climate and desire to take anyone's sides.
Thanks for the post, David. I do have one question about your father, if I may. There is a story I read somewhere online many years ago to the effect of this.
Milton Friedman was visiting a country, and as he rode around in a car with his guide, he noticed a construction site where workers were using shovels and the like instead of more modern equipment. He asked the guide: “Why are these workers using shovels?” To which the guide responded: “It’s to create jobs. If they using modern equipment they won’t be enough jobs to go around.” To which Milton Friedman responded: “Then why don’t they use spoons instead and create even more jobs?”
I have always wondered if this story actually happened. Of course, whether it did or not, it displays an impressive amount of economic wisdom for such a short anecdote (at least, I think it does).
It sounds plausible, but I don't know if it is true.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
I read that same story a long time ago, in S. I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action. I'm not sure I recall correctly, but I think he might have attributed it to Stuart Chase.
The greatest public intelectual of the XXth century. I am not a libertarian, but a typical European Christian/social democrat, but at the end of the seventies, the restoration of the market as the “defect economic mechanism” was a matter of survival for the Western civilization. Your parents were two lucky people, but the world was also lucky of having them.
While I see the point of TANSTAAFL, a while back I read Israel Kirzner's Competition and Entrepreneurship, a discussion of those phenomena from an Austrian perspective. A point Kirzner made was that the key thing entrepreneurs did was maintain a high level of alertness to opportunities, and be the first to take the initiative in acting on them. It struck me that what Kirzner was saying was that market economies are full of free lunches, and it's entrepreneurs who harvest them. . . .
The trouble there is that the lunch requires a lot of attention, so not quite free. Costs come in many forms.
It's not the exact quote you mentioned, but in this clip, after describing how the Fed totally failed its mission during the great depression, he says, "And so what happened? The Federal Reserve System wasn't abolished, unfortunately." Clearly implying that he thought it would've been better if it had been abolished. Not that the fed gradually increasing the money supply at a steady rate was optimal policy, but the best policy given the reality of its unfortunate existence.
Video here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10155464938005197
Interesting that my father, 5 years older than yours, deployed some of the same choice canards. He was a surgeon, not an economist, but it seems likely that the central event of their early adulthood - the Depression - perhaps played a part in that. It was "lazy man's load" - invoked to me for the same purpose - that got the memory machine rolling. Thanks for the that. I can't claim to have left my own kids with anything as sticky and apt. But I have been reminded in recent years that 'bad money drives out good', another fave of the old man when the opportunity arose. I didn't know WTF at the time - chronically slow on the uptake. But having made it this far I have a better idea now.
Another good one from that same generation was "we aren't rich enough to buy poor" which I still tell my kids. I didn't really understand that one myself until I dropped two socioeconomic classes in the space of three years.
Thank you for sharing, and thank you for replying to people's messages yourself. Sometimes it still feels remarkable that as a layman I can directly communicate to intellectuals I respect so much.
I try to follow my father's example.
Replying is easier with email and online conversations than it was for him with ordinary mail. On the other hand, mailing someone is also easier — I'm not sure he could have answered all his correspondents if writing him had been as easy then as it would be now.
I am irritated when someone writes something online that I want to respond to and there is no obvious way to do so. The implication is that he only wants to talk, not to listen.
Sometimes the poor -- as in inexperienced -- carpenter would be correct to blame his tools. There are a great many tools out there which are terribly made. An extremely good craftsman, using all his or her skill, can still manage a good result with such things. There also are other tools which are well-made but also designed so that they should only be used once you have acquired a certain level of skill. Before then, they will just be too hard to use. Unfortunately, novices by definition do not know enough to stay away from both sorts of trouble. I think because of this adage, a good many learners expect too much of themselves, and conscientiously blame their poor result on their lack of skill instead of understanding that they really do need better tools, especially when they are learning the job. One moral is to try to have an expert around when buying an unfamiliar tool. Another is not to be too hasty in concluding that something is too hard a thing for you to learn.
The carpenter has an incentive to blame someone other than himself. The tools don't get to give their side of the story. So while the tools might be at fault, that isn't the way to bet.
Also, the statement is about a bad carpenter, hence one likely to be at fault.
This is a marvelous post! By the way, in my 20s, as a freelance journalist for a small newspaper in Southern California, I sent your father a news article I'd written that attempted to skewer some statist views though it was not an opinion piece. "You did nobly," he wrote back. In fact, he wrote me several times, with comments in the margins of my snail-mail letters. When I decided to interview all my favorite economists for a book, I interviewed both him and you. He was at the height of his fame-- it was the 1980s-- yet he responded right away and said I could do a 15 minute interview over the phone if I could wait six months, because he was so busy. I was happy to wait. I hadn't started my book project at this point, I just wanted to ask him about Social Security, in hopes of writing an op-ed for the Orange County Register, which I did. At that time, I was not an employee of any newspaper or even employed, except as a freelancer. I had only my own name (Joy Anthony at the time) and my earnestness as backing. He gave me a great interview. Unfortunately, I was too shy to pursue my book project to the end, since I was attempting to cover the personal lives of the great economists as well as their beliefs and I never did ask him about his. But many of my efforts were turned into op-eds for the Orange County Register. I remember that you and I got into an argument on the economics of gift giving. You wrote in your textbook that monetary gifts make the most sense. It was an interesting discussion. I'm so glad you shared the links you did in this post. Thank you.
Here's something on taxi medallions in New York City. It's from Wikipedia:
(The price of medallions) peaked around 2013 at over $1,000,000. Between 2014 and 2015, New York City's non-corporate medallion price dropped 45%. In 2015, the price had fallen to approximately $650,000. As of 2018, one could purchase a medallion for less than $200,000.
I think DDF is wrong about gift giving. The payoff of giving a gift is not simply the recipient's enjoyment of it, or their increase in utility. The payoff is the pleasure of trying to think of something that they will enjoy, or find useful, but that they would never think of getting for themself, so that it comes as a surprise.
For example, I have a friend who practices the fabric arts, including spinning and knitting. This last Christmas, my wife and I bought a good print of Velazquez's Las Hilanderas (showing two women spinning, one by spindle and one by wheel, based on the contest of Athene and Arachne) and sent it to her. She wrote back that she really liked it and was going to frame it and put it in her workrooms. We could not have gotten nearly as much pleasure by just sending her the money and knowing she spent it on something she wanted. Since part of the motive for making gifts is our own pleasure, that's not irrelevant.
I totally agree. And I think David agreed in part. It's a thrill to buy something that shows your knowledge of the other person, both for them and for yourself.
I discuss the puzzle of gift giving and some possible solutions in an earlier post:
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/why-do-we-give-gifts-4d4
Thanks!
What a lovely and inspiring post. Thank you.
Your papa was _Milton_ Friedman? I honestly didn’t know that till today. As an old college friend used to say ‘holy bucket!’
Many of us have been lucky enough to have wise and compassionaye fathers, I have tried to be so to my children.
My anecdote: I grew up in a very small farming community. Perhaps 800 people in the township at its height just after WWII, and 350 in the small village. It took me years to realize that my father 'ran' the community, in that no important decision was made until they had asked for Jim's thoughts. He was much ike your father, I think. He clearly defined a goal (and often said that if you didn't know where you wanted to go you might well end up some place you didn't want to be) then everyone discussed how to best achieve it.
He asked a lot of questions of anyone concerned or who want to talk, and he was a great listener. At some point he'd say, "Well, it appears that the best thing for everyone would be . . ." and describe a decision/policy that basically everyone had led themselves to. He had a gift.
And he spent some years on the village board. He seemed to enjoy it. There was another guy, Ed, who pretty much opposed everything, especially if it meant spending village funds. Ed could be a bit harsh and obstreperous. But Dad loved Ed. He said Ed was really never disagreeable, exactly, just serious, and never insulting, he many times made important points, and "If I could convice Ed I just knew I had to be right." He told me that you need a good, serious opponent to challenge you becasue without that you got slow and your arguments got dull, and your decisions got worse.
And Dad would take any side of any argument. He could make the best argument for things he didn't believe or like. He said that you have to know your opponents' argument as well as they do, or even better than they do if you're going to reach the best solution.
I miss him a lot.
Lovely. How amazing and wonderful to have such a father! I still have several copies of Free to Choose in my closet, ready to give to someone in need -- if they are open to reading it. That and Capitalism and Freedom were powerful influencers and educators for me in the early 1980s. (My record shows that I read Capitalism and Freedom in August 1982, one month after your Machinery of Freedom.)
Love this reflection. PS: I once wrote a homage to Milton and Rose Friedman's beautiful idea" -- the negative-income tax -- in my 2020 Chapman Law Review paper titled "Guaranteed Income: Chronicle of a Political Death Foretold"; see here: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/chapman-law-review/vol23/iss1/3/
I've been dying to know how either you or your father dealt with temper tantrums when you or your children were very young. This is one thing I've never been able to figure out.