A crítica a Milton Friedman e à Escola de Chicago

Num artigo de 1971, na revista de The Individualist e publicado novamente no Journal of Libertarian Studies, Murray N. Rothbard conclui da seguinte forma:

Milton Friedman Unraveled

"It is almost as if any passing joker who mumbles a few words about "freedom" is automatically clasped to our bosom as a member of the one, big, libertarian family. As our movement grows in influence, we can no longer afford the luxury of this intellectual sloth. It is high time to identify Milton Friedman for what he really is. It is high time to call a spade a spade, and a statist a statist."

Os pontos abordados:

1.THE CHICAGO SCHOOL
-The Chicago School on Monopoly and Competition
-Friedman’s Chicagoite Egalitarianism
-Welfare’s "Supply Function"
-Incentives under the Friedman Plan
2.MONEY AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE
-Fisher on Money
-Friedman on Money
-Fisher, Friedman, and the End of the Gold Standard
-A Return to the Gold Standard
3.NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS
4.THE IMPACT OF FRIEDMAN

Resumidamente?

For we find Friedman bearing heavy responsibility both for the withholding tax system and for the disastrous guaranteed annual income looming on the horizon. At the same time, we find Friedman calling for absolute control by the State over the supply of money – a crucial part of the market economy. Whenever the government has, fitfully and almost by accident, stopped increasing the money supply (as Nixon did for several months in the latter half of 1969), Milton Friedman has been there to raise the banner of inflation once again. And wherever we turn, we find Milton Friedman, proposing not measures on behalf of liberty, not programs to whittle away the Leviathan State, but measures to make the power of that State more efficient, and hence, at bottom, more terrible.

Nota final: A Escola Austríaca sempre teve "problemas" com a de Chicago. O próprio Hayek quando passou por Chicago enfrentou dificuldades, quer devido a questões epistemológicas quer por causa da recusa em aceitar a errada teoria da produtividade do capital, os métodos quantitativos, o monetarismo, etc.

Quanto a Mises e Rothbard, a sua estrita defesa do "free-markets" colocou-os sempre ao lado das teorias semi-liberais que tudo fazem para justificar o crescimento do "big state", sendo estes (semi-liberais) por isso aceites na sua corte como uma espécie de "enfant terribles" da social-democracia mas que "in the end", a justifica (a social-democracia).