What's the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
Interpretation
The quote questions the inconsistency in views on immigration over time, suggesting that what was once acceptable may no longer be feasible.
Milton Friedman critiques the inconsistent attitudes toward immigration, highlighting how societal, economic, and political contexts alter the perception and viability of free immigration. He argues that while free immigration was beneficial before 1914, the complexities of today's world render that approach impractical, calling for a deeper understanding of historical and contemporary factors influencing immigration policies.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about current immigration laws to highlight historical perspectives.
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.
To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.
I am for . . . each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.
Hard power makes sense under some circumstances. But there's not a universal solution to global problems.
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
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