Milton Friedman Anticipated Trump and Sanders

Milton Friedman Anticipated Trump and Sanders in a 1974 Interview With Reason Magazine:

The two, chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals, on the one hand, and businessmen, on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others. . . . He thinks . . . [that] there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities. . . . The businessmen are just the opposite — every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but, when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always “the special case”. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing. . . .

It is hard to categorize Bernie Sanders as an intellectual -after all we’re talking about a man that doesn’t understand interest rates, what standing has to do with the Supreme Court, how due process works and believes that child hunger could be solved by limiting choices in underarm deodorant- but other than that Friedman’s assessment pretty well describes the populist Republican and populist Democrat running for President in 2016.

Kip Hooker:

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  • The levels of socialists:

    1. Intellectuals. These are primarily in academia, and various writers and philosophers (who may also teach). These are the Alinskys and Chomskys. Their problem is chiefly that they are way too egghead to get elected. But deep down, they KNOW that they should be ruling, and doing so absolutely.

    BTW, that includes Mencken too. Many of us love his quotes ripping Congress and politicians. That;s not because he's some kind on libertarian or populist. He's an absolute elitist who didn't think Congress or even elections should exist because people are too stupid to have a voice in gov't.

    2. Liberal politicians. These start off as useful idiots for the above. Intellectuals know they need a sales force to blow smoke into peoples' faces and distract them from the real goals. The degree to which a politician leaves the category of useful idiot and becomes a real player is dependent on the power they gain. Hillary - lot of power (buys a lot of teflon). Robert Torricelli, not so much. Time will tell where Sanders' standing is. He might just "get retired". Or maybe he'll wake up dead on Fort Marcy Park. If he gets elected, the intellectuals will have their work cut out for them ensuring the "right" people get the important appointments.

    3. Stars/celebrities. Most think of themselves as intellectuals. They're not. They're useful idiots. People will act as if they take the celebs seriously as long as the popularity and ability to influence opinion holds up (not everyone - they know full well 50,000 low-info voters can swing a key state.

    4. Useful idiots.Small time activists who think that the moment they get a chance to talk with a #2 (they don't know #1 exist - they're idiots, remember?), they will immediately be recognized as the geniuses they are and will be, from then on, in the loop.

    5. Democrat voters. They all have one of two goals - stop "the other", or screw "the other". That's it. That's all they care about. They have all sorts of fixed ideas and hallucinations about what conservatives, libertarians, and/or Christians are doing, and all they know is that they must be stopped. Or, if they are lower down the humanity ladder, screwed over. They operate entirely on hypnotic commands and phrases that are completely meaningless in the real world,such as neo-cons, military-industrial complex, extreme right, evangelical, 1%, income inequality, micro-aggression, etc, etc, etc.