Friedman has also supported various libertarian policies such as decriminalization of drugs and prostitution.
en.wikipedia.org
Political controversy
Friedman visited Chile in 1975 during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Invited by a private foundation, he gave a series of lectures on economics. Several professors from the University of Chicago became advisors to the Chilean government and several Ph.D. graduates from the same university – known as "the Chicago boys" – served in Chilean ministries. Friedman met with Pinochet during his visit to Chile, but he did not serve as advisor to the Chilean government or maintain personal contact with Pinochet. Nevertheless, he was accused of supporting a regime whose policies included torture and the killing of political opponents. A number of protesters demonstrated against Friedman during the 1976 Nobel Prize ceremony. (See Miracle of Chile)
Critics have remarked that Chile's dictatorship used its power to implement free-market policies, thus contradicting the relationship that Friedman claims exists between free markets and political freedom. Friedman defends his role in Chile on the grounds that the move towards open market policies not only improved the economic situation in Chile but also contributed to the softening of Pinochet's rule and to its eventual replacement by a democratic government in 1990. He also stresses that the lectures he gave in Chile in 1975 were the same lectures he later gave without incident in China and other Socialist states.
Friedman visited China during the beginning of the Chinese economic reform. His works had been studied secretly by many young Chinese students, and his ideas played an important role in the transformation of the Chinese economy from a strict socialist economy based on the Soviet model to a more open limited market economy.
In the 1970s, Friedman argued against the trade and diplomatic embargoes that many Western nations had imposed on the white minority governments of South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), claiming that the embargoes played into the hands of anti-Western, Communist insurgencies in those countries, that far more repressive regimes in Africa and elsewhere were not being similarly punished, and that progress towards racial equality and freedom in South Africa and Rhodesia might be better pursued through a policy of engagement with their governments. Friedman was criticized for visiting those countries in 1976 and meeting with members of pro-Apartheid government without publicly calling for repealing the racist electoral laws that were then in place.
In 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists, called for the legalization of marijuana in an open letter to the President, Congress, Governors, and State Legislatures of the United States. |
