Quotes of the Day for Milton Friedman's Birthday
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
~Milton Friedman
Free cheese is only found in mousetraps.
~Russian proverb (HT: Boris)
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Friday, July 31, 2009
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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9 Comments:
thanks for posting it Mark.
From what I've read Friedman actually did not coin "There's no such thing as a free lunch." It was attributed to him because he published an op-ed collection under that title. The phrase itself actually dates to at least the 1930s to no one in particular.
nice quotes! Love the mouse trap one. That's going on in my repertoire.
As is the word repertoire as i had to look it up...
I always associated the phrase with Heinlein, though it's been around longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL
In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has - to put it mildly - a fatal design flaw.
- Frank Zappa
Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…
The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
- M. de Tocqueville
I often wondered how the child's inate sense of declaring ownership, "mine", was handled by the day care workers in Soviet daycare. Is it the same as daycare workers in the U.S,: "we must share"?
I think daycare workers and the public schools treated the "mine" problem the same in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Sharing is what you had to do with stuff that belonged to other people (toys, candy, etc). The other part of that is the tried and true "if you don't have enough for everyone, you can't have it yourself".
Eventually, there is nothing to share.
@ Anon. 8-1, 5:16 AM,
Thnaks for sharing that. Don't you wish OPEC would share? They seem to have enough for everyone.
Please, share your thoughts if you have them. Oh, you post as anon., so your thoughts don't have the "mine" concern.
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