Free to Choose

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement is a 1980 book by economists Milton and Rose D. Friedman, accompanied by a 10-part series broadcast on public television, that advocates free market principles. It was primarily a response to an earlier landmark book and television series The Age of Uncertainty, by the noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Free To Choose has been translated into two dozen languages and a companion book.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement maintains that the free market works best for all members of a society, provides examples of how the free market engenders prosperity, and maintains that it can solve problems where other approaches have failed. Published in January 1980, the 297-page book contains 10 chapters. The book was on top of the United States best sellers list for five weeks.

PBS broadcast the programs, beginning in January 1980. It was filmed at the invitation of Robert Chitester, the owner of WQLN-TV. It was based on a 15-part series of taped public lectures and question-and-answer sessions.

The general format was that of Milton Friedman visiting and narrating a number of success and failure stories in history, which he attributes to free-market capitalism or the lack thereof. Following the primary show, Friedman would engage in discussion moderated by Robert McKenzie with a number of selected debaters drawn from trade unions, academy and the business community, such as Donald Rumsfeld (then of G.D. Searle & Company) and Frances Fox Piven of City University of New York. The interlocutors would offer objections to or support for the proposals put forward by Friedman, who would in turn respond. After the final episode, Friedman sat down for an interview with Lawrence Spivak.

Guest debaters included:

The series was rebroadcast in 1990 with Linda Chavez moderating the episodes. Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Shultz, Ronald Reagan, David D. Friedman, and Steve Allen, each give personal introductions for one episode. This time, after the documentary segment, Milton Friedman sits down with a single discussion participant to debate the points raised in the episode.

The Friedmans advocate laissez-faire economic policies, often criticizing interventionist government policies and their cost in personal freedoms and economic efficiency in the United States and abroad. They argue that international free trade has been restricted through tariffs and protectionism while domestic free trade and freedom have been limited through high taxation and regulation. They cite the 19th-century United Kingdom, the United States before the Great Depression, and modern Hong Kong as ideal examples of a minimalist economic policy. They contrast the economic growth of Japan after the Meiji Restoration and the economic stagnation of India after its independence from the British Empire, and argue that India has performed worse despite its superior economic potential due to its centralized planning. They argue that even countries with command economies, including the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, have been forced to adopt limited market mechanisms in order to operate.

The authors argue against government taxation on gas and tobacco and government regulation of the public school systems. The Friedmans claim that the Federal Reserve exacerbated the Great Depression by neglecting to prevent the decline of the money supply in the years leading up to it. They further argue that the American public falsely perceived the Depression to be a result of a failure of capitalism rather than the government, and that the Depression allowed the Federal Reserve Board to centralize its control of the monetary system despite its responsibility for it.