The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that government interventions often fail to solve problems effectively and may even exacerbate them.
Milton Friedman implies that when the government attempts to solve social or economic issues, the solutions it proposes can be just as flawed as the original problems they aim to address. This highlights the potential inefficiencies and unintended consequences of government actions, calling into question the role of government in effectively managing complex issues. Friedman's perspective encourages individuals to be cautious about relying on government intervention without critically assessing its potential impact.
In practice
In a discussion on economic policies, one might quote Friedman to illustrate skepticism towards government intervention.
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
Justice and mercy/ Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.
Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions
Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone.
I have never conceived that having been in public life required me to belie my sentiments, or to conceal them. Opinion and the just maintenance of it shall never be a crime in my view, nor bring injury on the individual. I never will by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance. I never had an opinion in politics or religion which I was afraid to own; a reserve on these subjects might have procured me more esteem from some people, but less from myself.
Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
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