Allow me to enlighten you, PR! Old Uncle Miltie was a one-trick pony. The tune he never tired of singing was that if you simply privatize everything and eliminate all government intervention, markets will miraculously self-regulate and produce wealth for all! Capital will magically find its way into the most productive roles and the world will be fully of happy joyous wealthy consumers. His philosophy is remarkably similar in its naive innocence to the economic theories of Karl Marx in that they both completely disregard the human race’s propensity towards greed and cheating. At the extremes of the spectrum, the left and and right wings of economics begin to eerily resemble one another. They both involve placing a lot of trust in unaccountable goons.

Friedman’s influence in the Chicago School of Economics was behind a lot of deregulation in this country and others. Remarkably, the US hasn’t been deregulated as badly as some places (Iceland in 2003 or Argentina in the late 80s, for example). With no one guarding the chicken coop, the foxes have the run of the place and before you know it it’s been emptied out. Pretty good deal — as long as you’re a fox.