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Copyright © 1980 by
Foreword to the Harvest Edition
When Free to Choose was first published a decade ago, we were sufficiently optimistic to label our final chapter “The Tide Is Turning.” The climate of opinion was, we thought, shifting away from a belief in collectivism and toward a belief in individualism and private markets. We did not dream that the tide would turn as dramatically as it has—on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
elsewhere. Ten years ago, many people were convinced that capitalism, based on free private markets, was a deeply flawed system that was not capable of achieving both widely shared prosperity and human freedom. Today conventional wisdom regards capitalism as the only system that can do so.
Is Free to Choose outdated and no longer needed now that its main thesis has become conventional wisdom?
Conventional wisdom may have changed, but conventional...
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Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know th...
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What appeared to many readers of the book ten years ago as Utopian and unrealistic will, we believe, appear to many new readers as almost a blueprint for practical change. We are therefore delighted that Harcourt Brace Jovanovich is issuing a new edition of Free to Choose. The tide has turned, but it is still far from the flood tide that is so badly needed to assure a bright future for human freedom.
Những gì mà nhiều độc giả của cuốn sách mười năm trước coi là Utopia và không thực tế, chúng tôi tin rằng, sẽ xuất hiện với nhiều độc giả mới như một bản thiết kế cho sự thay đổi thực tế. Chính vì vậy, chúng tôi rất vui mừng khi Harcourt Brace Jovanovich phát hành một ấn bản mới của "Free to Choose". Dòng chảy đã thay đổi, nhưng vẫn còn xa mới đến được cơn lũ dâng trào mà cần thiết để đảm bảo một tương lai tươi sáng cho tự do của con người.
This book has two parents: Capitalism and Freedom, our earlier book, published in 1962 (University of Chicago Press); and a TV series, titled, like the book, “Free to Choose.” The series will be shown on the Public Broadcasting Service for ten successive weeks in 1980.
Cuốn sách này có hai nguồn gốc: "Capitalism and Freedom", cuốn sách trước đó của chúng tôi, được xuất bản năm 1962 (bởi Nhà Xuất Bản Đại Học Chicago); và một loạt chương trình truyền hình, có tên giống như cuốn sách, "Free to Choose". Loạt chương trình này sẽ được phát sóng trên Dịch Vụ Phát Thanh Công Cộng trong mười tuần liên tiếp vào năm 1980.
Capitalism and Freedom examines “the role of competitive capitalism—the organization of the bulk of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market—as a system of economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.” In the process, it defines the role that government should play in a free society.
"Capitalism and Freedom" xem xét "vai trò của chủ nghĩa tư bản cạnh tranh - tổ chức phần lớn hoạt động kinh tế thông qua doanh nghiệp tư nhân hoạt động trong một thị trường tự do - như một hệ thống tự do kinh tế và một điều kiện cần thiết cho tự do chính trị." Trong quá trình đó, nó định nghĩa vai trò mà chính phủ nên đảm nhận trong một xã hội tự do.
“Our principles offer,” Capitalism and Freedom says, “no hard and fast line how far it is appropriate to use government to accomplish jointly what it is difficult or impossible for us to accomplish separately through strictly voluntary exchange. In any particular case of proposed intervention, we must make up a balance sheet, listing separately the advantages and disadvantages. Our principles tell us what items to put on the on...
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Free to Choose treats the political system symmetrically with the economic system.
The book covers many items that the time constraints of the TV programs made it necessary to omit or allude to only briefly. And its coverage is more systematic and thorough.
After months of preliminary planning, actual filming began in March of 1978 and was not completed until September of 1979.
Anthony Jay, Michael Peacock, and Robert Reid of Video-Arts played a key role in the initial design of the series and an important supervisory role thereafter.
They made our venture into a strange and complex world an exciting and enjoyable experience rather than the nightmare that we now realize it could easily have become.
Television is dramatic. It appeals to the emotions. It captures your attention. Yet, we remain of the opinion that the printed page is a more effective instrument for both education and persuasion.
Anyone who is persuaded in one evening (or even ten one-hour evenings) is not really persuaded. He can be converted by the next person of opposite views with whom he spends an evening. The only person who can truly persuade you is yourself. You must turn the issues over in your mind at leisure, consider the many arguments, let them simmer, and after a long time turn your preferences into convictions.
Introduction
It proclaimed a new nation, the first in history established on the principle that every person is entitled to pursue his own values: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise.
Tự do kinh tế là một yếu tố cần thiết cho tự do chính trị. Bằng cách cho phép mọi người hợp tác với nhau mà không cần ép buộc hoặc hướng dẫn trung ương, nó giảm bớt lĩnh vực mà quyền lực chính trị được thực thi. Ngoài ra, bằng cách phân tán quyền lực, thị trường tự do cung cấp một sự cân bằng cho bất kỳ sự tập trung quyền lực chính trị nào có thể xuất hiện.
CHAPTER 1 The Power of the Market
In agriculture,
In the labor market individuals
COOPERATION THROUGH VOLUNTARY EXCHANGE
First,
Adam Smith
THE ROLE OF PRICES
The key insight of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it.
Chinese or an Indian.
Adam Smith’s
Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity: first, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued purposes; third, they determine who gets how much of the product—the distribution of income. These three functions are closely interrelated.
Transmission of Information
Incentives
The effective transmission of accurate information is wasted unless the relevant people have an incentive to act, and act correctly, on the basis of that information.
Distribution of Income
The price that the market sets on the services of our resources is similarly affected by a bewildering mixture of chance and choice. Frank Sinatra’s voice was highly valued in twentieth-century United States. Would it have been highly valued in twentieth-century India, if he had happened to be born and to live there? Skill as a hunter and trapper had a high value in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, a much lower value in twentieth-century America. Skill as a baseball player brought much higher returns than skill as a basketball player in the 1920s; the reverse is true in the 1970s.
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