Customer Reviews

The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism

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While I am more of a rights based anarchist, I can appreciate utilitarian arguments against government. No one does a better job at presenting a utilitarian case for anarchism than David Friedman does in this masterpiece. Not only is Machinery of Freedom intellectually acute and persuasive, it is also a humorous and easy read for the lay person interested in libertarian thought.

This book touches quite a bit on the issues that most libertarian anarchists find difficult to deal with, such as national defense and polycentric law. A good critique of government education is also offered as well as a two part section on monopolies. As a seasoned libertarian, I most enjoyed the postscript, which focuses on more advanced topics like private currency, law and econ, and anarchist politics.

In sum, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in anarcho-capitalism, from those new to political philosophy to well versed freedom fighters.

Once in a while, one reads a truly extraordinary book. The Machinery of Freedom qualifies for a variety of reasons: its intellectual rigor and honesty, and its fearlessness in asking tough questions.

Friedman's distrust of intellectual orthodoxy and his distaste for complacency come through everywhere, as he systematically sketches out his ideas about the society he thinks would leave the vast majority of the world's inhabitants better off. Not infinitely better off -- there are no utopian dreams here -- but materially and spiritually better off.

Central to Friedman's thought is the notion that governments are finite, constrained institutions like any others -- hardly the infallible entities for which we simply design outcomes. Whenever someone says 'There's a case for government intervention here,' the implicit assumption is that the intervention will be done flawlessly and properly. That's not always, or even often, the case -- intervention has to be viewed as a tradeoff. If it makes little sense to assume that there are perfect markets, then it makes even less sense to assume that there are perfect governments. Friedman makes a convincing case that we should rarely, if ever, expect government to produce better outcomes than the market does, simply because of the different incentives those two processes present individuals.

I am not entirely persuaded by Friedman's argument, but I would be hard-pressed to give a good reason therefor. That means I am not thinking clearly, which is hardly Friedman's fault. At the risk of sounding redundant, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

So what would happen if we threw an election and nobody came? That is the central theme of David Friedman's book The Machinery of Freedom." While it not hard to find libertarians shooting the wounded by attacking easy targets like the post office or the sugar quota, it is rare to find someone who advocates dismantling all government functions. It is even rarer to find someone who does it coherently. Friedman is both of these things. Friedman presents a utilitarian case for anarchy, or as he refers to it, "anarcho-capitalism." Anarcho-capitalism is essentially a society that not only respects property rights, but has no government. If the two seem to be mutually exclusive, you have not read the book. Friedman slaughters the fallacy that since certain government services (police, fire department, etc) are essential, they must be provided by the government. As a teacher of mine once put it "he throws a monkey wrench into the sacred cow." After reading the Machinery of Freedom, you will wonder why you didn't think like this all along. Steve Frenc

David Friedman has an uncommon ability to illustrate complex topics in Economics, Law, and Liberty. Yet while he skewers the collectivists, he also points out that some Libertarian positions are overly simplistic. His book helps you think, even when you have reservations about a few of his positions.

The book has 4 parts. Part 1 is devoted to defending Human Rights in property. Part 2 is devoted to ideas for reducing the influence of goverment. The chapter "Buckshot for a Socialist Friend" is precious. Part 3 is an exploration of how a society might exist without a state, along with an admission that this might not always be possible. Finally, Part 4 is addressed to Libertarians in general.

The Machinery of Freedom has been called the Bible for anarcho-capitlism and radical libertarianism (among other things, some not as flattering) but it isn't the definitive work. What it is, however, is a really great book that outlines many of the popular utilitarian/efficiency arguments for anarchy and puts it in a way accessible to everyone. David Friedman is probably the greatest living "father" of anarcho-capitalism, and this book is the main treatise available to a wide audience. The book bleeds logic and doesn't pull any punches - it is matter-of-fact and does what it purports to do: shows, briefly, how "public goods" could be privately provided and that Statism, especially welfare statism, is grossly inefficient.

David Friedman, a physicist by training, is the son of Nobel laureate and Chicago economist Milton Friedman. Don't let his natural science background turn you away - David Friedman understands economics very well. Maybe it was destiny. His writing style is good, and his insights are some of the best, as a whole, in the history of anarchist thought. This book is a great introduction to anarchy as well, but don't expect too much hand holding - the book is fast paced.

Friedman, while a "radical capitalist," does not go on tangents about the "revolution" or bringing down the system. The book is a scientific and philosophical inquiry, and as such is well thought out, well constructed, and well presented. The chapter on Iceland is well-researched, even if seemingly out of place. Overall, Friedman is a real thinker capable of presenting his major ideas concisely and in a readable fashion. Most educated readers will find it accessible, and I believe you will find it interesting if not completely eye-opening. Libertarians should read this to understand what it means to apply libertarian ideas consistently (forget "Libertarianism: A Primer"). The chapter on national defense is weak, and the moral/philosophical dimension is also weak, but the book is short. If you read this in combination with the works of Mises and Rothbard, you will have a good survey of the seminal works in anarchist thought.

You can tell how good a libertarian book is by how angry it makes the social Jesuses of both left and right flavors of authoritarianism.

If you only read one political science book in your life, read this one. If you read more than one, read Rothbard and Hayek.

This may be an unintended consequence of his writing this book, but I stopped believing in government or rights after reading it.

Governments are just coercive organizations and rights are superfluous.

Deal with it.

I deal with the government as I would with any other coercive individual or organization, not necessarily as an enemy but as a potential trader and negotiator. I may avoid it, trade with it, or negotiate with it.

I deal with rights as simply values held by other people, but not some magical ether that pervades or transcends the universe in some way that obligates me.

The world is the way it is, and the nature of the world determines how I deal with it, nothing else. Nothing is added to the world by calling it God, nothing is added to organizations by calling them government, and nothing is added to human values by calling some of them "rights". There is no obligation inherent in states of affairs, just a set of if-then's, conditional implications based on your values.

Read this book and you will see that it's the machinery of *your* freedom.

Deal with it and prosper.

This book is a good companion to Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, and I hope readers of either one will also read the other.

Thanks, David.

Despite his thorough knowledge and mathematical background, David Friedman is a master in keeping it simple for the reader. I rate this book very high because he achieves a great deal by communicating fundamentals on liberty, human behaviour and social organization, without narrowing the scope and always giving the reader the choice to extrapolate the basic ideas to other every day life situations.

Although property rights might not be the core of this book, it has one of the best explanation and description of these all-important rights in human organization. Everything looks so simple afterwards, a possible consequence of applying a lot of common sense to these controversial topics.

A great book for everybody, not only economists.

I had the pleasure of reading this book in the mid to late 1990s and what an experience it was! David Friedman introduces anarchy and anarcho-capitalism in simple, non technical terms in which the main thrust of his book is to make the case for people to live in a society without government (i.e. coercion).

According to Friedman, most (if not all) of the services provided by governments (like police protection, law enforcement, education, prosecution and arbitration) can be provided for privately. He also discusses other issues like foreign policy, immigration and the libertarian movement from an anarchist perspective too.

Friedman's ideas are not too far off base. There was a time during the 19th century when people bought and paid for police and fire protection thru plans underwritten by insurance companies. This and the books "The Voluntary City" (which I also recommend) and "The Market for Liberty" spell out clearly and concisely how alternatives to government services would work as well as private communities.

The ideas spelled out in Friedman's book and the specifics demonstrated in "The Voluntary City" deserve serious attention since the ultimate thrust of both treatises is to describe a society whereby people can have better alternatives to government and the monopolies it creates as well as introduce people to fresh, radical ideas that can have enormous impact in the political and economic arenas.

Though I think anarcho-capitalism looks better in print than in practice, in light of Somalia's flourishing private sector that has resulted from its anarchy, Dr Friedman's book and "The Voluntary City" are as relevant today as the day they were published.

Friedman's rather utilitarian approach to the issue of public goods shows how government and monopoly work to produce bad law as a public good, saying "It is no more than a slightly exuberant exaggeration to say that a government functions properly only if it is inhabited exclusively by devils"(p 217). He shows how under the monopoly conditions of government, the "worst get on top".

Friedman shows that under the system of corporate statism we all suffer under today, just law is a public good and bad law is really special interest law and can therefore be viewed as a private good. Friedman says that folks spend more time acquiring private goods than they do public goods because the benefit of a private good is whole whereas the benefit of a public good is divided amongst others. As a result, government overproduces bad law and underproduces good law.

Friedman's solution is to bring about conditions where law is bought and sold under market conditions. In that way, the bad law becomes a public good while the good law become a private good. For the reason given in the previous paragraph, Friedman postulates that good law will be overproduced and bad law underproduced.

In this imagined scenario, of course, there are no corporations. Corporations are creations of the state and these artificial persons have no place in a free market.

I think this book is ingenious. Friedman obviously took a lot of time to figure out how a stateless society that respects property rights might operate. He offers potential solutions to various public goods problems. My favorite was his solution to money in chapter 46, where he suggests there should be a commodity-bundle based on receipts backed by various commodities. This is only one example of the many clever ideas he comes up with. Even if you aren't a libertarian or anarchist, I suggest you get this book at least as an excellent insight into anarco-capitalist theory.