Free to Choose

Free to Choose is for one thing a fascinating time capsule and worth watching for that reason alone. But this was released in 1980, on the cusp of Reagan's presidency and a major turning point in America. Want to learn about Reaganomics?

Then watch this because it's Friedman's sinister ideas that fueled that mess which has affected us to this day.

No doubt Friedman was incredibly intelligent, but here you can see how he outright ignores facts in order to push his ideas about his glorious free market which he believes will solve every social I'll, despite the glaring facts to the contrary.

Each episode begins with Friedman traveling to different places around the world and touting his free market ideaology and the second half of the show is Friedman back at the University of Chicago, where so many horrible things have come out of their School of Economics, and he debates his theories with a number of people across the political spectrum. The discussions are intelligent and engrossing and at times even surreal, such as when "businessman" Don Rumsfeld insists on morals and ethics and asks where is the humanity in Friedman's ideas. You can't make this up.

An interesting exercise while watching this is comparing the situation we're in now with how Friedman and the others said it would be.

My ranking of the series is biased since I persuaded Friedman to undertake the series and was Executive Producer of the programs. I write only to correct a common misconception. The book was based on the TV series, and was written by the Friedman's at their summer home in Vermont the summer of 1979 using the transcripts of the programs as a starting point. Thank you.

Fascinating.

Twice as fascinating from a 2018 perspective. I strongly disliked the talks after each episode and most of the speakers. But the thoughts of the actual film are amazing. It seems that there was no work or thought on the libertarian side after Milton Friedman.