Milton Friedman Q&A Discussing Big Government

Summary

Milton Friedman discussing big government and government failure. People are eager to point out a slightest hint of market failure, but if the government stepped in to “answer” such problems, they would also encounter failure. This government failure is often big, obvious, and leads to the unsustainable debt of our nation, yet people only insist on calling out a market failure. Some of the largest government programs are failures. They are bleeding money, leading to catastrophic debt, failing to help or solve the problem they were intended for, and nearly impossible to reverse once set into motion. The market navigated the problem a lot better compared to government. We fail to consider the benefits vs. costs when implementing new programs. A nation could create an agency to try to lessen pollution. That agency has a noble sounding cause. Well-meaning names should not be enough. Perhaps that agency erects offices, and those offices cause pollution through heating, energy waste through cooling, labor waste by taking citizens from the private sector, and taxing citizens to pay for these new positions. Compound that with a fleet of polluting cars this agency decides to purchase, conventions that staff are flown into from all over the country in polluting aircraft, and hazardous waste when buying and then disposing of electronics needed to run such agency. Amplify this by how much of the taxpayer dollar actually went directly into solving a problem. Was the problem solved at all? We are outraged when we discover that out of the $10 we donated to a charity, only .40 cents actually reached those in need. The rest was spent on salaries, transportation, meetings, and other red tape. Government waste is much more savage. Where is the outrage?