Age of uncertainty was an attempt to begin to use storytelling as a way to reach people, but it was a dismal failure because Galbraith was terrible.

The series was a response to The Age of Uncertainty, a 1977 PBS series hosted by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a former ambassador to India who was a leading spokesman for big government liberalism. It's only a very tiny minority at any time that have been able to escape from it.įree to Choose has been translated into two dozen languages and a companion book co-authored by Milton and his wife Rose was a New York Times bestseller and a book of the month club selection.

Would you tell me the alternative which has improved a lot of the ordinary people? What is the system which in your mind has been successful? Most people through most history have lived in tyranny and misery. You've got to compare something with something. In an era long before the web and YouTube democratized discourse, Friedman showcased an assortment of radical thinkers such as economist Walter Williams: “The minimum wage law has the effects of saying that if you cannot produce $2.90 worth of goods an hour you don't deserve a job”, and Thomas Sowell: “To ascribe any status to any group of people: equality, inferiority, superiority, must necessarily reduce freedom”, and he subjected leading left-wing intellectuals like democratic socialist Michael Harrington, teachers union leader Albert Schenker, and political scientist Francis Fox Pivens to withering criticism of their ideas. Over the course of 10 one hour long episodes, the Nobel prize winner laid out the pitfalls of protectionism: “As consumers buying in an international market the more unfair the competition the better”, espouse the virtues of school choice: “How do you explain the fact that there is no area of the free market, no area of the private market in which the poor people who live in the ghettos of our major cities are as disadvantaged as they are with respect to the kind of schooling they can get”, and explained why spending, not taxes, was the real measure of the burden that governments put on their citizens: “If congress spends 50 billion dollars more than it takes in government spends 50 billion who do you suppose pays that 50 billion, of course the Arab sheikhs aren't paying it, Santa Claus isn't paying it, the tooth fairy isn't paying it.” The operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiency but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.įorty years ago, PBS of all networks gave the libertarian economist Milton Friedman hours in prime time for Free to Choose, an unapologetic take on why capitalism was morally and pragmatically superior to socialism.

Forty years later, the libertarian Nobel laureate's PBS series is still winning hearts and minds.

Milton and rose friedman free to choose