The Free Market Myth: An Intro to Keynes versus Friedman

So it begins. The first of many, many videos about free markets, economics, Keynes versus Friedman and more. This first level-setting video about free markets breezes through history to describe the two periods of modern capitalism as defined by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman.

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ABOUT UNFTR
Unf*cking the Republic (UNFTR for short) is a longform podcast that covers U.S. politics through a progressive socioeconomic lens. Each episode is a deep and delicious audio dive into a particular subject that helps explain how we arrived in Bizarro America, the funhouse mirror version of what was originally intended. The UNFTR YouTube channel is designed to break some of these larger concepts into smaller more digestible pieces.

[oskarzoch]

You talked quite a lot, and jumped between multiple topics, but you didn't give any arguments.
Why do you think the free market is not real? I think more scientific approach would be better, there is enough crap on political news.

[saltvadoor]

This is a misunderstanding of Friedman. Friedman had Keynesian premises but had criticisms of the model which would ultimately turned out to be correct and adopted.
- Nominal interest rates are not the correct indicator for the stance of monetary policy
- Fiscal policy (especially taxation) is not a good tool to reduce aggregate demand
- In the LR the Phillips curve breaks down
- wage/price controls are not a good tool to address inflation.

He was very much in favor of “printing money” to address aggregate demand and he thought monetary policy was more powerful than originally believed. Which was also correct.

[AmeenChaoua-yrmp]

Economics is SCIENCE! You gave no scientific arguments but political crap.

[ekapunk]

The free market is not only the most efficient system, but it also is the only fair system. Government intervention inherently relies on unequal treatment under the law and on violence.

I like how you critique Friedman by saying he believed markets could solve anything, while conceitedly believing you, a simple man, can single-handedly find a better solution than the one found by millions of human beings. The market is not a "mystical" being, the market its the people.

As Hayek said in the fatal conceit: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design"

[ethangroat]

Talk about a bad faith argument. The government has never followed Friedman's prescriptions anywhere near totality. That is why we don’t have a free market: government never eliminates its interventions. Anarchy is the closest to a real free market.

Also Friedman agreed with Keynes about stimulating the economy during a depression or recession, though mildly, or else doing nothing. Your representation of both the real market and Friedman's ideas are inaccurate. I suspect there was more than a little confirmation bias in your exploration of these ideas.

[miguelfalcao]

You said that the free market doesn´t exist and didn´t prove it, and we are supposed to take your word for it?

[michaelchristian]

If the free market could cure the great depression... ...why didn't it do so during the presidency of Herbert Hoover?

[cstonemma]

Weren’t their depressions before the Great Depression that corrected themselves on their own with government intervention. FDR’s policies prolonged the great depression for no reason.

[psikeyhackr]

What did Keynes ever say about planned obsolescence?
Did he ever see a television commercial for automobiles?

[sudhirbuch]

Friedman’s policy transformed Britain under Margaret Thatcher and in India under then Finance Minister Mr Manmohan Singh. Deregulation and cutting government bureaucracy was the main reason for rapid developments in both the countries.

[davidadamek]

The main point of this video is government good, free market bad. This video contains no arguments, just a bunch of name-calling and misinterpreted parts of Wikipedia articles.

[JonathanSmith-kzjo]

1:14 - no he did not. He knew that public goods, National defence, the police force and management of the treasury for the purpose of collecting and managing taxes was necessarily better services when delivered by government. Murray Rothbard sounds more like the kind of person who you (and I as well), disagree with.

1:38 - and what? You are right, and therefore it makes no sense to claim that free markets don’t exist and then to turn around and say that free markets have been unsuccessful in preventing the aforementioned issues; the logic does not hold.

5:50 - this is utterly dishonest. At no point did any Chicago economist think to originally win over the Republicans through using racism as a conduit through which to achieve such a goal. Racism goes against the philosophy of these economists, who advocated for personal freedom among individuals and this goes against the state’s horrid social engineering of hatred towards Black and Hispanic people during the Jim Crow era. Furthermore, the welfare policies were not helpful in solving poverty, with single parent families on the rise, and the black unemployment rate hitting high after high, doubling as early as the mid 1950s as minimum wage laws removed the cost of discrimination, with black teens being hit the most.

6:15 - as much as I disapprove of Reagan due to the net negative of his presidency, he was right about this point, and the fact is still true today. Take a look at any inflation and money supply graph, and you will see it moving 1 to 1, with some meandering in recent times given the replacement of immediate inflation with hidden inflation through loan and mortgage bubbles. It is absolutely true that a bigger government causes more inflation because they end up doubting more money to keep itself propped up.

To conclude, please stop making false statements, especially when you make no discernible effort to back yourself up.

[andersbenson]

I’m always glad to have a refresher on some of your core talking points. Keep up the great work, let’s spread the word about the UNFTR channel and #EffMiltonFriedman

[johnphillips]

This started out so good and then devolved into a political rant like everything else these days. Maybe one side is not wrong and the other right, but rather both positions have something to contribute, and maybe both are valid to a point depending on the situation at the time.

[jdpod]

Wait.. so market success isn't the best metric to measure National or Personal wellbeing? And if we use this metric as our only means to measure the success or failure for our government we end up tripping down the stairs of the HDI index and falling out of the top 20 despite being the wealthiest nation on earth? My Econ101 professor is totally clutching their pearls right now.
(good to see you Max)

[flatliner]

No cussin allowed on YouTube.
In seriousness Keynes vs Friedman is kind of the seminal economic debate to be had. But I think we need to use it to reimagine what’s next. The social democracies of Northern Europe seem to have it MOSTLY figured out but I don’t think they have dealt with being truly multi-racial and multi-ethnic. It’s time to start talking solutions. Keep up the great work.

[BSagacious]

Love the re-visits and I am very glad to finally put a face to the voice. #FMF

[truthseeker]

Richard Wolf and Mark Blithe, prove Milton Friedman wrong . The only reason he got Nobel on economics is because the group who suggested it were former economists from the Chicago school of economics, his former colleagues. Ever since Reagan adopted his economic policies the country has been going down .

[linchudson]

There is only one way to spell "free markets": JUNGLE. Upton Sinclair had it right.

[flatliner]

(Coda) now I have Uncle FuckNugget’s face in the right hand column of my feed. This algorithm bruh…….. 😭