The Market v. the Bureaucrat

There is today a widespread tendency to take it for granted that growth of population, advancing technology, expanding output of goods and services, increasing complexity of our industrial structure—the whole set of developments we label economic growth—necessarily repress individuality and enforce conformity. In the words of the brochure describing a recent symposium, “many thoughtful persons view these [scientific and technological] advances as creating new forms of bondage and as grave threats to the integrity of the individual.”

I believe that this view is, to say the least, a great oversimplification. True, new forms of bondage are being created, and there are grave threats to the integrity of the individual. But the history of mankind—from primitive times to the present—is mostly a record of bondage, of tyranny of man over man. We do not need any sophisticated analysis to explain why freedom is threatened. Tyranny is the natural state of mankind. The remarkable thing about our era is the freedom we enjoy, not the threats to that freedom. And these threats themselves are not an inevitable consequence of the growing complexity of our society. They are a result of the social policies we have chosen to adopt. They are a result of a lack of understanding, not of harsh inevitability.

MF

About the Author

Milton Friedman

There is today a widespread tendency to take it for granted that growth of population, advancing technology, expanding output of goods and services, increasing complexity of our industrial structure—the whole set of developments we label economic growth—necessarily repress individuality and enforce conformity. In the words of the brochure describing a recent symposium, “many thoughtful persons view these [scientific and technological] advances as creating new forms of bondage and as grave threats to the integrity of the individual.”

I believe that this view is, to say the least, a great oversimplification. True, new forms of bondage are being created, and there are grave threats to the integrity of the individual. But the history of mankind—from primitive times to the present—is mostly a record of bondage, of tyranny of man over man. We do not need any sophisticated analysis to explain why freedom is threatened. Tyranny is the natural state of mankind. The remarkable thing about our era is the freedom we enjoy, not the threats to that freedom. And these threats themselves are not an inevitable consequence of the growing complexity of our society. They are a result of the social policies we have chosen to adopt. They are a result of a lack of understanding, not of harsh inevitability.