There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes personal responsibility and the freedom of choice in consumer behavior.
Milton Friedman asserts that individuals should have the autonomy to make their own choices, even if those choices may lead to self-harm. He argues against government intervention in personal decisions regarding consumption, highlighting the importance of personal responsibility and freedom in a market economy.
In practice
In a discussion on regulations about vapes, one might say, 'As Milton Friedman pointed out, there is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.'
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs?
A city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.
I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
Condemning all women in order to help some misguided men get over their foolish behaviour is tantamount to denouncing fire, which is a vital and beneficial element, just because some people are burnt by it, or to cursing water just because some people are drowned in it.
To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.
Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.