Topic: Government Regulation
In Defense of the Milton Friedman Institute My letter in response to Faculty and Staff at the University of Chicago who protested the establishment of the Milton Friedman Instituteby Christopher Espinal
(Conservative)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Dear University of Chicago Faculty and Staff,
I am a second year undergraduate economics major at the University of Chicago. It is my pleasure to study under and converse with some of the greatest minds in economics that this world has to offer.
The object of my message is to defend one of the greatest minds in economic theory and the purposes of his work.
Milton Friedman was as much a scientist and a thinker as any professor on today's Chicago faculty. His ideologies as an individual followed from models that he observed as empirically successful. A proper challenge to his work constituted appropriate criticisms backed by facts and evidence. I can quote Friedman as saying the following in his important piece on the scientific and theoretical methodology of economics:
Only factual evidence can show whether [a hypothesis or theory] is "right" or "wrong" or, better tentatively "accepted" as valid or "rejected. ...the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of its predictions with experience.
Before Dr. Friedman aimed to make his work on the Permanent Income Hypothesis a mainstream concept in macroeconomic theory and practice, he purported to Keynesian orthodoxy which called for greater government activity. Had this scientist died with Keynesian thought as a central concept in his contributions to macroeconomic practice, every faculty member that signed the petition protesting the Milton Friedman Institute would be the first to welcome its establishment.
This brings me to my next point. After speaking with countless faculty members of the U o C community, it occurred to me that an overwhelming majority possessed outspoken leftist tendencies. However, no upheaval or protests by "right-wingers" happen in classrooms.
It should be obvious that the real issue at hand is not mere ideology, but the notion that humans, both educated and non-educated, have stubborn qualities that motivate, not conversation and debate, but the removal of any scientific conclusions that conflict with common wisdom.
A faculty member had the audacity to call the Milton Friedman Institute "...a right-wing think tank being put in place."
No serious intelligent person can derive from this insult that stubborn ideology is not what inspired the motion to evade the progress of Friedman's scientific contributions. A person who puts science first would challenge ideas, not on grounds of right-wing affiliations, but on grounds of empirical method and evidence. I am utterly disappointed in those faculty members that encourage silencing ideas rather than embracing an intellectual exchange because of work that inspired world leaders that differ in philosophy.
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2008 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, June 19, 2008
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Oh, that Friedman was a right-wing scoundrel. I've even heard a rumour that a group funded by international arms dealer Alfred Nobel once gave him an award.
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2008 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.