Oliver’s Reviews > Capitalism and Freedom > Status Update

Throughout the entire first chapter, Friedman does not explain why any of his predicted results of letting the free market off it's "chains" would occur. He is very confident that they will happen, but doesn't bother giving us any detailed reasons for why. It is treated as gospel, an obvious fact that could never be denied.

He has a very warped idea of what socialism is, and it dramatically shapes his work throughout the entire chapter, as his whole strategy is to compare his perception of the free market to his perception of socialism.

This becomes quite the problem as the comparisons start, as he never bothers to give any definitions or guidelines to the topics at hand and only uses some sort of cloudy "vibe" of the two topics: 1. The free market is when freedom exists in the market and when you can choose where to work (don't go into how you can't really choose your workplace if you are forced to take the first option that arrises if you don't have a surplus of money at hand). It is also where you can advocate for anything, as you only need money to make your idea take root and be heard; that "only" does quite a lot of heavy lifting there.

2. Socialism is when the government does stuff, nothing more nothing less. In big, evil, scary socialist society you need permission from **government** factories to print your newspapers, permission from **government** agencies to fund a team of propagandists, and if your words are too persuasive and start to challenge the **status quo**, then you'll be fired by... THE GOVERNMENT! So scary...

And please, don't notice the fact that this applies equally to capitalist society, just remove the big, scary **government** label from point 2.

I've got to say, it is very easy to make your ideas seem so nice and amazing if you use such a cloudy analysis. Since the definitions can simply change on a whim, they then always serve Friedmans arguments.

This chapter is also FILLED with contradictions. A prominent example being his opinion (and I mean OPINION, as he never gives a substantial theoretical argument for it) that inequality brings freedom, as you only need to persuade a few select, wealthy people to work against their own interests, but at the same time: it is anti-freedom to have a system where you need to convince a few **government** officials to promote your ideology in a scary **socialist** society. There are many more, but I am honestly so tired of this chapter, I can't be bothered to go through them all.

Basically: there is no theoretical value to any of his arguments in this chapter, as everything is purely based on vibes and a HEAVY discrimination of which aspects of which systems he mentions to the reader. He argues with the voice in his head and wins and then shows that embarrassing victory to the reader, and thus it is a waste of time to try and argue against him. There is no factual basis to his words.

I, a terrible writer, could write a book like this without any problem.