Milton Friedman is invoked throughout The Bob Zadek Show as a libertarian free-market economist whose positions on immigration, conscription, education, business and the cost of government serve as reference points for the program’s arguments. Bob Zadek calls him one of the leading libertarian free-market economists who ever lived, and guests treat him as an intellectual hero even when they dispute his conclusions. The excerpts do not present a biographical narrative; they show Friedman’s ideas being used, defended and challenged.
Immigration and the welfare state
The most developed treatment of Friedman in the excerpts concerns immigration. A caller named Ed tells Bob Zadek that Friedman used to say illegal immigration is only good because it is illegal, because the big problem with immigration is immigrants coming to work the welfare system. Bob Zadek agrees and elaborates: Friedman believed that open borders and a welfare state could not coexist, that open borders would bankrupt the country with a welfare state, and that the welfare state had to be undone first, or else immigrants arriving through open borders would have to be denied welfare benefits Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
Bob Zadek adds that Friedman acknowledged undoing the welfare state was a non-starter, and that Friedman therefore argued for gradualism: legal immigrants would participate in the economic system but not the safety net, being denied benefits such as food stamps for a period. Bob Zadek connects this to work visas and to Gary Johnson, whom he calls his favorite candidate for president Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
The same argument recurs years later. Bob Zadek says Friedman thought long and hard about how an open border policy can exist in a welfare society, and concluded in a data-driven analysis that immigration cannot exist in a welfare state and will bankrupt the country. He says Friedman’s ideal was to scale back welfare benefits, and that if that is not done, welfare benefits must simply be denied to immigrants or the system will die California Discovers Federalism (2018).
Joe Mathews, who says he interviewed Friedman several times when he was alive, disputes the premise. He says he has not read Friedman’s work on that subject, having spent more time discussing tax policy and Friedman’s involvement in the development of Prop 13, and that he thinks societies with relatively high degrees of welfare need immigration because aging societies need younger workers who pay taxes. He cites California’s extension of Medi-Cal to undocumented kids and argues that low immigration levels, not high ones, are the current problem California Discovers Federalism (2018).
Conscription and the draft
Don Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University, says no single individual in America is more responsible than Milton Friedman for getting rid of the military draft. He says Friedman was a tireless and passionate opponent of military conscription, that Friedman believed the draft was slavery, and that Friedman opposed it chiefly on moral grounds because it takes someone’s life for two, three or four years against their will. Boudreaux says Friedman was doing this when it was not popular, and that every American owes him a debt of gratitude The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011).
Boudreaux also stresses that Friedman never called himself a conservative and denied it, describing himself instead as a liberal in the classic sense, in the way the term was first used. Boudreaux notes that Friedman was in favor of drug legalization and was a passionate opponent of conscription, positions no one would identify as conservative The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011).
Bob Zadek, in the same segment, says Friedman was the creator, perhaps, of the concept of school vouchers, which he describes as another way of saying free choice in schools. He says there was no issue Friedman cared about more than opening up the educational system to the free market The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011). The episode marks Friedman’s birthday, with Bob Zadek noting he was born 99 years ago that day.
Education and school choice
Friedman’s school-choice legacy frames a later episode on Arizona’s universal school choice legislation. Bob Zadek says that in 1980 Friedman wrote Free to Choose, which he calls the classic inquiry into the relationship between freedom and economics, and which later became a PBS broadcast series hosted by Friedman himself and was still receiving considerable attention over 40 years later. Bob Zadek says the show will apply Free to Choose to public education and learn from Arizona how citizens can free their children from the monopoly of government schools Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022).
The guest, Matt Beienburg, is identified as the Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute. Bob Zadek credits the Goldwater Institute and Beienburg with helping persuade the Arizona legislature to adopt legislation he calls probably the most far-reaching of any legislation in the country, allowing citizens to choose the school they wish their children to attend with tuition substantially, if not completely, paid for by the state Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022).
Business and shareholder primacy
Friedman’s 1970 article in the New York Times is the starting point for a debate with Ed Freeman, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia. Bob Zadek says the article’s title was “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” that he read it in 1970 and found it obvious, and that Friedman argued it was not only immoral but inefficient for a corporation to do anything other than maximize shareholder value, so long as it could do so legally and consistent with cultural norms Stakeholder Value: A New Story About Business (2021).
Freeman calls Friedman one of his intellectual heroes and says the question is less whether Friedman was wrong than whether his reasoning applies to business today. Freeman says what Friedman missed, because he was an economist who wanted to explain how markets work, was what really makes a business successful: products and services customers want, suppliers who make them better, employees who show up and use their minds, good citizenship in the community, and money for shareholders. Freeman says he does not think Friedman was wrong so much as he does not think Friedman understood what really makes a great business tick Stakeholder Value: A New Story About Business (2021).
Government cost
Friedman’s remark on the cost of government opens an episode on infrastructure. Bob Zadek quotes Friedman as saying, “It costs any government at least twice as much to do something as it costs anyone else.” Bob Zadek calls Friedman one of the leading libertarian free-market economists who ever lived and a great man, and uses the quotation to introduce a discussion with Chris Edwards, identified as Director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, about who owns and should own American infrastructure A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017).
Across episodes: the immigration argument
The immigration question is the one Friedman topic argued in more than one episode. In the 2011 episode, Bob Zadek presents Friedman’s position that open borders and a welfare state cannot coexist and endorses gradualism through work visas and denial of benefits Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). In the 2018 episode, Bob Zadek restates the same conclusion and calls it data-driven, while Joe Mathews, who says he interviewed Friedman, disputes the premise and argues that aging societies need immigration and that low immigration is the problem California Discovers Federalism (2018). What changed between the two treatments is not Friedman’s position but the presence of a guest who challenges it: in 2011 the caller Ed supplies the Friedman reference and Bob Zadek agrees; in 2018 Bob Zadek supplies it and Mathews pushes back. The other episodes touch Friedman on conscription and school choice, business, and government cost, but the excerpts show no development in those treatments beyond separate invocations.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give Friedman’s birth or death dates beyond Bob Zadek’s remark that he was born 99 years ago on the day of the 2011 episode, nor do they describe his academic career, his Nobel Prize beyond Joe Mathews calling him a Nobel Prize winner, or his work on tax policy beyond Mathews mentioning his involvement in the development of Prop 13. The excerpts do not state what Free to Choose argued beyond Bob Zadek’s characterization, nor the contents of the 1970 New York Times article beyond the title and the shareholder-value argument. No excerpt states the outcome of any case, the text of any statute, or the details of Arizona’s legislation beyond Empowerment Scholarship Accounts being named in the episode description.