Αν εννοείς ότι είναι δύσκολο γιατί δεν απευθύνεται σε αυτόν, θα διαφωνήσω. Αυτόν αφορά πρώτα από όλους. Αν εννοείς ότι πιθανόν δεν έχει την απαραίτητη ειδική μόρφωση για να το καταλάβει και πάλι θα διαφωνήσω. Η γραφή του Friedman είναι απλή και σαφής. Αν εννοείς ότι δεν έχει χρόνο να διαβάσει, τότε γιατί να μεταφράζουμε οτιδήποτε;
Τί σημαίνει διαδεδομένη σκέψη αν δεν είναι διαδεδομένη στο ευρύ κοινό; Δηλαδή αν οι κυβερνόντες έχουν διαβάσει κάποιον που λέει «λιγότερη κυβέρνηση», τότε η ιδέα έκανε τον κύκλο της;
Προσωπικά, επειδή «είμαι από άλλο πλανήτη» και δεν πίστευα τον Mule, πήγα να το δω με τα μάτια μου. Στο ?mainstream και εμπορικό ? Fnac το τμήμα του βιβλιοπωλείου που αφορά την οικονομία και την πολιτική δε βρήκα ούτε ένα βιβλίο φιλελεύθερης οικονομικής σκέψης, μεταφρασμένο στα ελληνικά. Αντιθέτως είχε πολύ Τσόμσκι, πεντακόσιους αναλυτές του Μαρξ και τριακόσιους κατακριτές της παγκοσμιοποίησης. Προβληματισμένος, γύρισα όλα τα μεγάλα βιβλιοπωλεία του κέντρου και βρήκα σε ένα από αυτά, μόνο ένα βιβλίο του Hayek και μάλιστα όταν το ζήτησα ? για να δω αν υπάρχουν κι άλλα ? μου είπαν ότι δεν υπήρχε καν στον «υπολογιστή»…
Περί Pinochet, ας απαντήσει ο ίδιος…
[SPOILER]
On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet
INTERVIEWER: Tell us about some of the abuse you had to suffer and the degree to which you were seen as a figure out on the fringes.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Well, I wouldn’t call it abuse, really. (laughs) I enjoyed it. The only thing I would call abuse was in connection with the Chilean episode, when Allende was thrown out in Chile, and a new government came in that was headed by Pinochet. At that time, for an accidental reason, the only economists in Chile who were not tainted with the connection to Allende were a group that had been trained at the University of Chicago, who got to be known as the Chicago Boys. And at one stage I went down to Chile and spent five days there with another group – there were three or four of us from Chicago – giving a series of lectures on the Chilean problem, particularly the problem of inflation and how they should proceed to do something about it. The communists were determined to overthrow Pinochet. It was very important to them, because Allende’s regime, they thought, was going to bring a communist state in through regular political channels, not by revolution. And here, Pinochet overthrew that. They were determined to discredit Pinochet. As a result, they were going to discredit anybody who had anything to do with him. And in that connection, I was subject to abuse in the sense that there were large demonstrations against me at the Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm. I remember seeing the same faces in the crowd in a talk in Chicago and a talk in Santiago. And there was no doubt that there was a concerted effort to tar and feather me.
INTERVIEWER: It seems to us that Chile deserves a place in history because it’s the first country to put Chicago theory into practice. Do you agree?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: No, no, no. Not at all. After all, Great Britain put Chicago theory in practice in the 19th century. (amused) The United States put the Chicago theory in practice in the 19th and 20th century. I don’t believe that’s right.
INTERVIEWER: You don’t see Chile as a small turning point, then?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: It may have been a turning point, but not because it was the first place to put the Chicago theory in practice. It was important on the political side, not so much on the economic side. Here was the first case in which you had a movement toward communism that was replaced by a movement toward free markets. See, the really extraordinary thing about the Chilean case was that a military government followed the opposite of military policies. The military is distinguished from the ordinary economy by the fact that it’s a top-down organization. The general tells the colonel, the colonel tells the captain, and so on down, whereas a market is a bottom-up organization. The customer goes into the store and tells the retailer what he wants; the retailer sends it back up the line to the manufacturer and so on. So the basic organizational principles in the military are almost the opposite of the basic organizational principles of a free market and a free society. And the really remarkable thing about Chile is that the military adopted the free-market arrangements instead of the military arrangements.
INTERVIEWER: When you were down in Chile you spoke to some students in Santiago. In your own words, can you tell me about that speech in Santiago?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Sure. While I was in Santiago, Chile, I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile. Now, I should explain that the University of Chicago had had an arrangement for years with the Catholic University of Chile, whereby they send students to us and we send people down there to help them reorganize their economics department. And I gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile under the title “The Fragility of Freedom.” The essence of the talk was that freedom was a very fragile thing and that what destroyed it more than anything else was central control; that in order to maintain freedom, you had to have free markets, and that free markets would work best if you had political freedom. So it was essentially an anti-totalitarian talk. (amused)
INTERVIEWER: So you envisaged, therefore, that the free markets ultimately would undermine Pinochet?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, absolutely. The emphasis of that talk was that free markets would undermine political centralization and political control. And incidentally, I should say that I was not in Chile as a guest of the government. I was in Chile as the guest of a private organization.
INTERVIEWER: Do you think the Chile affair damaged your reputation, or more importantly, made it harder for you to get your ideas across?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: That’s a very hard thing to say, because I think it had effects in both directions. It got a lot of publicity. It made a lot of people familiar with the views who would not otherwise have been. On the other hand, in terms of the political side of it, as you realize, most of the intellectual community, the intellectual elite, as it were, were on the side of Allende, not on the side of Pinochet. And so in a sense they regarded me as a traitor for having been willing to talk in Chile. I must say, it’s such a wonderful example of a double standard, because I had spent time in Yugoslavia, which was a communist country. I later gave a series of lectures in China. When I came back from communist China, I wrote a letter to the Stanford Daily newspaper in which I said, '“It’s curious. I gave exactly the same lectures in China that I gave in Chile. I have had many demonstrations against me for what I said in Chile. Nobody has made any objections to what I said in China. How come?”
INTERVIEWER: In the end, the Chilean [economy] did quite well, didn’t it?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, very well. Extremely well. The Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_miltonfriedman.html#10 [/SPOILER]
και αυτοί της οικονομίας δεν είναι και πολύ χαρούμενοι με αυτό που έγραψες: Γιατί η πολιτική φόρτιση δυστυχώς υπονομέυει την επιστημονικότητα…:roll:
(εσένα εννοώ, όχι το Friedman:wink:).