free to choose
If it weren’t for a few little books by economist Milton Friedman, today I’d be building houses in Washington State rather than writing economics in Washington, D.C.
Some might say the world’s worse off because of that. But hey—my own life’s been made enormously better, both materially and intellectually, because of the power and clarity of the ideas in two little books I stumbled upon in a university library a decade ago: Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose.
Now, thanks to the folks at the Palmer R. Chitester Fund, the ten volumes of the original “Free to Choose” PBS television series that later became the book are now available free on Google Video. They’ve also made the five volumes of the 1990 follow-up series available.
At the end of the day, all the important things in life are ideas—not the junk we spend our days trying to accumulate. These videos have got plenty of good ones. Do your kid’s generation a favor, and pass it on:
Original 1980 Series (10 Volumes):
Volume 1: Power of the Market
Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Anatomy of a Crisis
Volume 4: From Cradle to Grave
Volume 5: Created Equal
Volume 6: What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
Volume 7: Who Protects the Consumer?
Volume 8: Who Protects the Worker?
Volume 9: How to Cure Inflation
Volume 10: How to Stay Free
Updated 1990 Series (5 Volumes):
Introduction by Arnold Swarzenegger
Volume 1: The Power of the Market
Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: The Failure of Socialism
Volume 4: What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
Volume 5: Created Equal
Update: Unfortunately, the “Free to Choose” videos appear to have been removed from Google Video. Not sure why…
Update 2:The videos have been deleted from Google video. Short clips of the videos are available via You Tube at http://youtube.com/results?search_query=free+to+choose&search=Search
Update 3:I just received notice via email that high-quality versions of the “Free to Choose” videos are now available here: http://btjunkie.org/search?q=free+to+choose. These are clearly pirated—download at your own risk.
Update 4: The full “Free to Choose” series has now been made available at http://ideachannel.tv/. Enjoy.
Posted by Andrew on Thursday August 10, 2006 | Feedback?
